


Stuck in Gravity

by lahdolphin



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Aliens, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, Drama, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Language, Past Drug Addiction, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22586557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lahdolphin/pseuds/lahdolphin
Summary: In a time yet to come, on the far reaches of the galaxy, Oikawa comes face-to-face with Iwaizumi, his childhood friend turned intergalactic criminal. Iwaizumi claims he is innocent, and Oikawa is forced to make a choice that will change his life forever.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Kindaichi Yuutarou/Kunimi Akira, Tendou Satori/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Comments: 117
Kudos: 139





	1. Asteria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each tagged ship has a significant amount of content with Iwaizumi/Oikawa getting the most. There are also several other untagged ships that occur in passing and play no real significant role in terms of plot. 
> 
> This story delves into some heavy topics including, but not limited to, past drug addiction, mental health issues, and corrupt governments. Because this is a T-rated fic, I’m going to do my best to warn of anything that may inch closer to M-rating. Any chapter with more graphic content or violence will be noted at the start. For example, this chapter sees a character lose a finger offscreen in a comedic way. The finger is reattached, if that helps at all.

In a time yet to come, on the far reaches of the galaxy, Oikawa Tooru was lost.

The blue hologram map in his hand was stuck on one language and unfortunately, it was not one of the three he spoke. He shook the source of the hologram, a thin disc in the palm of his hand, which only made the projection flicker from blue to red. With an internal curse, he turned off the device and began to wander.

Like the hologram was supposed to do, the signs in the halls shifted between languages, showing ten at a time. Going one at a time would mean you would be standing for several minutes waiting for a language you recognized to come up. He figured you could still end up waiting several minutes if you were unlucky. He was not feeling particularly lucky today, or particularly patient, so he headed down the hall without a clue where he was going.

They said that not all those who wander are lost, but he was most definitely lost. There were humans and aliens all around him, some in crisp jumpsuits, others in uniforms. Workers, he figured, with colors and symbols denoting their departments. Then there were the travelers, humans and aliens alike in casual clothes, following their maps that actually worked. Then, walking towards him from the other end of the hall, he saw _him._

It had been years since he last saw him.

Oikawa had not attended his graduation ceremony from Apollo Academy. He didn’t display photos of his squadmates, or any photos from his time at the academy, which would surprise anyone who knew him from that time. He was not stuck in the past. He forgot it, except for when his leg ached and it was impossible to forget, and he so badly craved something he should not have.

Now, that man was walking towards him, the same resting bitch face, the same haircut, the same brand tennis shoes, the same everything. It felt like he had been rocketed back through time.

“Ushiwaka,” Oikawa muttered under his breath with all the hate in the world and more because there was always room in him to hate Ushijima Wakatoshi just a bit more. Only a handful of people could cause such a violent, guttural reaction in Oikawa and that man was one of them. He instinctively balled his hands so tight at his sides, the hologram cracked, piercing his palm, and his hand began to bleed.

Ushijima’s eyes met Oikawa’s and, to his credit, Ushijima did react. Ushijima was surprised to see him and Oikawa found some childish joy in surprising him. Most people probably wouldn’t see a reaction in that bland, unmoving face. For their first semester together at Apollo Academy, Oikawa saw nothing, too. Then he began to work with him in classes, and fight against him during exercises, and he had to learn to read his body and mind. It was hard to forget a language once you learned it so thoroughly. 

“Oikawa,” Ushijima said. “Am I dreaming?”

“Do you usually dream about me?” Oikawa asked, revolted.

“I thought it was an expression?” Ushijima’s eyes flicked down to Oikawa’s bleeding hand. “You injured yourself. May I touch you?”

“Excuse me?”

Ushijima’s eyes rose back to his face. “I am a surgeon. I can determine if you need stitches.”

“You’re not allowed to touch me no matter what, you hear?” Oikawa snapped.

Ushijima said, “If that is the case, please make your way to the Med Bay and have one of the nurses in the Infirmary look at it. Our nurses are very skilled. You will be in good hands.”

Oikawa once made a list of _One Hundred and One Insults for the Unbearable Ushiwaka_ , and he recalled the majority of them to this day out of pure spite. If this was easy, he would say one or two of those insults. If this was easy, he would be able to meet Ushijima’s eyes. If this was easy, he wouldn’t hear Shimizu’s voice in the back of his head telling him not to do anything he would regret.

“Tell me where it is,” Oikawa said. “My hologram broke and I don’t want to spend another second with you if I can avoid it.”

“I will take you there. If you do not have a functional map, it can be quite complicated.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“I do not mean to insult your intelligence. I heard from Kuroo that after a short break, you completed your PhD at a private institution and received a postdoctoral position at an esteemed university. Congratulations.”

“Just tell me where the Infirmary is,” Oikawa said through his teeth.

“I will take you there.”

“So, you’re still stupidly stubborn, huh?”

“You were always more stubborn than me, though,” Ushijima said dully.

Oikawa glared at him, then waved his bloody hand in a grand, over dramatic gesture and said, “Lead the way, Ushiwaka.”

Ushijima began to walk and Oikawa begrudgingly followed.

“Three thousand twenty-nine,” Oikawa muttered under his breath. “Three thousand twenty-nine, three thousand…”

* * *

The Infirmary in the Med Bay was a shiny silver with air that smelled of hand sanitizer. For a space station as large as Asteria 5, Oikawa expected the Infirmary to be packed, but it was empty except for a tall skinny man with copper hair. The man wore pale blue scrubs with yellow rubber ducks on them. He had his legs kicked up on the reception desk and was tossing a ball straight into the air.

Oikawa walked towards the skinny man and cleared his throat.

“How can I help you?” the man said in a picture-perfect customer service voice without looking at Oikawa or Ushijima.

“Hello, Nurse Hanamaki,” Ushijima said.

Hanamaki’s ball went flying across the room. It hit something metallic with a long-lasting ring that only made the situation ten times worse and ten times funnier. Hanamaki hastily tugged his feet off the desk and turned his chair to look at them with the wide, fake smile of someone that just got caught doing something they shouldn’t be.

“Dr. Ushijima,” Hanamaki said. His eyes flicked over to Oikawa, then down to his bloody hand. “Oh, that’s not good, is it?”

Just as Hanamaki stood to come around the desk, the door to the Infirmary opened and a peculiar looking man came in. Oikawa figured his top was supposed to be a white chef’s coat, but it was spattered with blood that matched the color of his hair. He had cheekbones sharper than a razor blade and a wild look to his eyes. Oikawa thought if a weapon had come to life, it would look like that man.

“Just who I wanted to see!” the man shouted happily. “Miracle Worker Wakatoshi!”

“Hello, Tendou,” Ushijima said.

Hanamaki sighed and asked, “What’d you do this time?”

“I was trying to show the new guys in the kitchen that the knives weren’t sharp enough. They _weren’t_ sharp enough, but they still managed to slice through my finger.”

Tendou held up his hand to show where a single finger was missing.

“Did you bring the finger?” Hanamaki asked, like this was a totally normal occurrence with this man. For some reason, Oikawa was not surprised. Tendou gave off the same energy as a tornado during a fire storm.

Tendou nodded, then said, “Hey, Wakatoshi, who’s he?” while looking at Oikawa like he was the strangest person in the room.

“Ah, excuse my manners,” Ushijima said, monotone and unapologetic. “This is Dr. Oikawa Tooru.”

“Oh, cool. Hey, Doc, catch this for me.”

Tendou lobbed his finger across the room. Ushijima said, “He is not a medical doctor, Tendou,” and Oikawa caught the finger with ease.

Of all the Alliance military academies, Apollo Academy was the softest. The other academies called it the Geek Generator. Rather than hardened soldiers, it produced doctors, and researchers, and all other kinds of intellectuals. They taught them how to use guns, and to be soldiers, but everyone knew people graduating from Apollo Academy would only be on the front lines to clean up the mess everyone else left behind and to collect samples to research in the safety of a lab.

So, despite his brief experience in a military academy, when Oikawa caught the detached finger, he promptly passed out.

“Wait, what kind of doctor is he, then?” Tendou asked. “Who did I just throw my finger to!”

* * *

Oikawa woke to the sound of an overhead light buzzing and scratchy hospital sheets against the exposed skin on the back of his neck. Sitting on a stool next to the bed was Ushijima, who was reading a magazine with a look of intense concentration. Oikawa wondered if he still read the advertisements the way he used to at Apollo Academy. 

“Why are you sitting there?” Oikawa asked. “Did I wake up as you were about to smother me with a pillow?”

“Why would I smother you?”

Ushijima carefully set the magazine on the bedside table and stood. He reached out for Oikawa’s hand, but Oikawa yanked his arm away. He looked down at his palm and saw near invisible stitches where his palm had been sliced open. His palm did not hurt, which would not surprise a normal person, but did surprise Oikawa, who lived with pain.

In the blink of an eye, Oikawa shot out of bed, wrapped his fists into Ushijima’s white lab coat, and shoved him up against the wall. He used less force than he did back when they were the academy together. He wasn’t capable of the same raw strength he had then, his carefully crafted muscles worn over the years. Ushijima was still solid and unmoving, and he still did not fight back. He never fought back unless they were fighting in a graded exercise. His lack of response always made Oikawa’s fury worse. 

“What did you give me?” Oikawa said, his voice growing in volume with each word until he was shouting. “Ushiwaka, _what did you give me_?”

The door to the room flew open. Nurse Hanamaki came in, yanking on Oikawa’s shirt to dislodge the two, but Oikawa did not release his hold on Ushijima. The two of them tumbled back together, Oikawa’s legs knocking painfully into the bed. He fell back onto those scratchy sheets and dragged Ushijima with him. He turned them, pinning Ushijima beneath him and straddling him across the waist, his hands white and shaking where they were balled into his coat.

“Do not call security,” Ushijima said, looking at Hanamaki, not an ounce of worry in his tone.

“But Dr. Ushijima, he’s—”

“I did not give you any pain medication, Oikawa,” Ushijima said. He turned back to look at Oikawa, whose fists eased but did not release completely.

“Not even ibuprofen?” Oikawa asked.

“No.”

“You swear?”

“I would not lie to you about this, Oikawa.”

Oikawa breathed. It did little to help. He released his grip and slowly stood. He could not look at Ushijima. He did not want to know what kind of expression he had. He did not know which would hurt more, an expression with emotion or an expression without it.

Ushijima rose to his feet, did not look at Oikawa, and said, “My shift begins in twenty minutes. Nurse Hanamaki, please check that he has not torn his stiches.”

Then, he left.

“C’mon, doc’s orders,” Hanamaki said, gesturing towards the bed. Feeling very stupid, but refusing to let it show, Oikawa sat on the bed and let Hanamaki look over his hand. Hanamaki asked, “How long have you been sober?” with such bland indifference that Oikawa was startled.

“Did he tell you?” Oikawa asked.

“No,” Hanamaki said. “Just figured from that conversation.”

Oikaw said, “I’ve been sober for three thousand twenty-nine days.”

“And for someone that _isn’t_ a human calculator?”

“A little over eight years.”

“Well, damn. Congrats.”

“Would have been higher if I didn’t relapse a few months after I got out of rehab for the first time.”

“I’m not an expert here, but I don’t think recovery is a competition," Hanamaki said. "Do you mind me asking what it was?”

“Pills,” Oikawa said, “and sometimes other hard drugs that were more fun, but mostly pills. I went to Apollo Academy with Ushiwaka and there was this training exercise… It was for the pain at first. Then, it wasn’t for the pain.”

Hanamaki didn’t ask anything else and Oikawa didn’t say any more.

“Well,” Hanamaki said, “your stitches still look okay. If you have any issues, let me know. Do you want a numbing cream for the pain? That’s what we gave you so it wouldn’t hurt, by the way.”

“I think I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, just come back if it starts to hurt too bad, yeah? Or if it feels hot to the touch or looks inflamed. And if you need it, there are pamphlets on the station’s anonymous meetings on the nurse’s station near the exit. I think we just have a general substance abuse meeting, but maybe that’s changed? Akira will know.”

He knew Hanamaki was just doing his job, but Oikawa already felt his iron-clad walls creeping up as he made his way out of Infirmary as quickly as he could. He did not keep his recovery a secret, especially when it mattered, but it was not something he was eager to talk about. He was not ashamed of his recovery; he was ashamed of the person he was before he reached this point.

The moment he left the Infirmary, he was completely and utterly lost.

“Would you like assistance reaching your quarters, Dr. Oikawa?” a synthetic male voice asked.

Oikawa startled. The voice certainly didn’t sound like it came from something that was alive. He looked around, not seeing any robots, then spotted a small glowing kiosk. He approached the kiosk, which read AKIRA beneath the screen in clean bold letters.

“Are you the station’s interface?” Oikawa asked.

“I am the artificial intelligence system programmed into the ship. You can call me Akira. Do you need help or not?”

“Touchy, aren’t you?”

“Artificial intelligence means personality,” Akira said dully. “My programmers must have been grouchy.”

“Could you show me a map to where I need to go? I need to find my room.”

“The Residence Sector is here.” A map showed up on the screen, a red line moving through the layers to show him where he needed to go. “You can access my systems at any kiosk at any time, if you get lost again. You seem to get lost a lot.”

“Have you been watching me?”

“I watch everyone. It’s my job.”

Maybe a few hundred years ago, that would have been unsettling, but even Oikawa’s home growing up had an advanced state of the art interface system. The interface lacked personality and independent thought, but it was always there, ready to respond with the time of day or the weather.

He had never met a real AI, though. They were fully sentient, their choices independent of statistics, with fully-fledged thoughts and feelings. The Alliance developed the first AI over twenty years ago and since then, only a dozen had been created. Asteria 5 was the gem of the Alliance, the largest intergalactic travel hub, and the only non-warship outfitted with an AI.

“Thank you for the help, Akira.”

“It’s why I was built.” When Akira paused, it was accompanied by the soft scratch of static. Then Akira said, “Welcome to Asteria 5. Try not to get lost again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Asteria:** the Titan goddess of falling stars and of nighttime divinations such as oneiromancy (by dreams) and astrology (by stars)_  
>   
> I usually do my thanks at the end of my fics, but I just quickly wanted to thank [possibledreamswriting](http://possibledreamswriting.tumblr.com/)/[vanz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vangie/pseuds/vanz) and [zelda_writes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelda_writes/works) for supporting me, letting me send them random lines, and giving feedback on ideas for this fic. This story wouldn't be what it is without them.  
>   
>  **[Tumblr tag](https://lahdolphin.tumblr.com/tagged/gravity-fic) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/lahdolphin) | [Pinterest board](https://www.pinterest.com/writingthoughtsandthings/wip-gravity/)**


	2. Antimatter

Oikawa never thought he would have to talk to Ushijima again and, at the rate he was going, he wouldn’t have to. He had gone nearly ten years without talking to Ushijima and while he had a slight bump in the road his first day on Asteria 5, that wasn’t going to happen again.

Asteria 5 held the record of the largest intergalactic travel hub in Alliance territory. Millions of humans and aliens passed through Asteria 5 every day, and even if the number of people living on the station was significantly lower, there was still little to no chance of him seeing Ushijima. The station was massive in every way, a true luxury in deep space, designed in a way that every inch was something worth bragging about—a thriving Arboretum larger than some ships, windows along the public corridors, and an AI programmed to see to your every need. 

Nearly a week after arriving, Oikawa was as tired as a corpse. His circadian rhythm had yet to adjust to the ship’s schedule and he had spent the day going back and forth between one of the loading docks and the cryo facility, wheeling cryo pod after cryo pod into storage. He studied biological processes across aliens and humans, which meant he needed samples from every species he studied. The lab he did his post-doc in happily supplied samples for him to continue his work, but no one mentioned they were sending whole samples instead of cell lines.

By the time he reached Food Court Chi for dinner, all of the tables were occupied. He wondered if maybe he could get a to-go box when he spotted an open seat next to someone he recognized. The younger man was tall as a tree, ironic considering he worked in the Arboretum, the massive indoor greenhouse with plants from Earth and light that mimicked the Earth’s sun.

“Kindaichi, right?” Oikawa said with a well-practiced but truly earnest smile.

Kindaichi startled and nearly stabbed himself with his fork. “Yes! Um, you’re…?” 

Oikawa sat across from him. “Dr. Oikawa Tooru, but you can just call me Oikawa. I’m working under Dr. Irihata.”

“You’ve only been here a few days, right?” Kindaichi asked. “How do you like it so far? Have you been to the Arboretum?”

“I do my morning run there,” Oikawa said. “It’s actually the most trees I’ve seen in one place and I grew up on Earth. I lived in a city, though.”

“Oh, me too! The Earth part, not the city part. I grew up near one of the environmental conservations so I’ve always been surrounded by plants. It’s why I wanted to work with them.”

“What species do you study? One of the species I work with is a sentient species classified as flora and fauna. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s called—"

Before he could finish, two long, pale arms looped around Oikawa’s neck, draping loosely across his chest. Oikawa went tight, not sure what to expect. Even when Tendou’s head came into view on his left, he still was not sure what to expect. Tendou looked like something out of a nightmare, sharp cheeks and sharper eyes.

“Hey, Doc,” Tendou said. “No need to stress; I promise not to throw my finger at you again.”

“Thanks,” Oikawa said tightly. “I appreciate it.”

“How’s the food?” Tendou asked cheerfully. “I made it!”

“Who are you?” Kindaichi asked.

Oikawa moved Tendou’s arms off of him. Tendou sat next to him, reached his hand across the table for a handshake, and said, “My name’s Tendou. And this is Oikawa. He caught my finger and passed out.”

“I’m Kindaichi.” Kindaichi hesitated to shake his hand. "What was that about your finger?”

Tendou pulled back his arm, not answering. He asked, “So, how’s the food? I’m a chef here in Food Court Chi. I was influenced by an Earth cuisine that uses squid ink to make pasta, but I wanted to be original and spice things up, you know? Squid is _so_ last century. I used xenocyte ink instead. It’s supposed to be super tasty.”

“Wait,” Oikawa said, dropping his fork to his plate. “Only infant xenocytes produce ink and you have to remove four of their limbs to reach the ink sack.”

“Oh, you’re smart,” Tendou said with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Do you know a lot about aliens, Doc?”

“I earned my PhD in xenobiology doing work on conserved cellular processes in humans and aliens. I don’t know everything about every species, but I do know it’s illegal to harvest xenocyte ink.”

Tendou didn’t seem phased. “Yeah, but does it taste good?” 

Across the food court, over Kindaichi’s head, Oikawa saw Ushijima with a tray of food. The man wore scrubs and a white coat, and he was approaching their table, and Oikawa did not know why. Maybe it was for Tendou. Worse, maybe it was for Oikawa. Either way, Oikawa did not want to stick around and find out.

“Food was great,” Oikawa said.

“You didn’t eat anything,” Kindaichi said. He looked down at his plate and his skin turned a sickly green. “I think that’s a good thing, actually…”

Tendou said, “They still live even if you remove a couple of limbs. They have sixteen! Who needs that many?”

Oikawa stood and nearly rammed the top of his head under Ushijima’s jaw. A small, petty part of him almost wished he had. He wondered if it would make the same _crack_ he always heard when he remembered hitting Ushijima at the academy. He had been at his lowest when that happened. As he grew older, he felt less joy at the memory and more shame. Even now, as the memory crossed his mind and he looked the man he punched, he felt mortified.

“Oikawa,” Ushijima said. “I was about to ask if I could join you three for dinner.”

“I’m just leaving.” Then, though he was years out of practice, Oikawa lied right to his face, “Another time, maybe.”

“I would enjoy that. We have not talked in some time.”

“But you didn’t eat anything!” Tendou said. “I put my heart and soul into that pasta, you know. And that ink was hard to get. At least take a bite. I promise, it’ll make you want to protest that law.”

“You didn’t eat?” Ushijima asked. “Consuming the proper number of calories and nutrients is vital to a healthy lifestyle.”

“I’ll grab a nutrient bar on my way back to my room,” Oikawa said coldly, with no intent to grab a nutrient bar. His appetite had disappeared thanks to Tendou. Even if it hadn't, remembering how he hit Ushijima made him sick to his stomach. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Oikawa left without sparing Ushijima second glance.

* * *

Hidden away in his quarters where Ushijima would not bother him, Oikawa was buried beneath his blankets. Today was a rest day for his body, so he did not wake up an hour early for his run, but his body was still wide awake. Through the fog of exhaustion, he heard Akira calling his name. Oikawa turned and shoved his face into his pillow, but Akira’s voice only grew louder.

“Oikawa,” Akira said, “you have an incoming transmission from Earth. She won’t stop calling no matter how many times I hang up on her. It's getting annoying.”

“Tell them to call another time. Especially if it’s my mom.”

“Your mother is currently on Mars. This call is from Japan.”

“How do you know where my mom is?” Oikawa asked as he sat up. “Right. All powerful, all knowing AI.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’m not that creepy. She was just in the news.”

He regretted what he said moments ago; he wished his mother was the one calling. His earliest memories of his mother were of sitting in her lap as she negotiated in an alien language he did not know. His father often looked over him when his mother traveled for work, but sometimes she brought him along with her. His mother was a linguistic specialist and a diplomat for the Alliance. She held the peace between over seventy species after the war ended, even if that meant dragging her toddler-aged son across the galaxy to attend meetings.

“If it’s not my mom, then who’s calling me?” Oikawa asked.

Akira slowly rolled down a metal panel on the opposite wall to reveal a large screen he had not known existed. He said, “A woman named Shimizu Kiyoko.”

“Oh, shi—”

Oikawa broke off his curse when Shimizu’s face appeared on the screen. She was the kind of beauty you would expect to find carved into marble at a museum, immortalized for all to see, but she would never allow that to happen. She would never let men gaze upon her with their lecherous eyes. Perhaps she could be Medusa and turn those men to stone like they deserved.

“You said you would call after you settled in,” Shimizu said, her expression hard as steel but voice soft as silk. “We agreed you would call by your seventh day. It’s now your eighth day.”

“I lost track of time. Honestly.”

“You made me worry, Tooru.”

“Don’t you have more trust in me?”

“It’s my job as your sponsor to help you stay clean and I know how hard it can be to be in a new environment. You’re light-years away from home on a station with no support network where millions of people pass through every day. Plenty of alien species use recreational substances that are highly addictive to humans.”

His walls went up, his shoulders squared, his body preparing for a war he did not want. Defensively, he said, “I can get blood work done or a urine sample analyzed, if it’ll help make you feel better.”

“No. I know what you’re like when you’re high. And I do trust you, Tooru, but it's my job to question you to make sure you stay clean, remember?"

Without fighting a single battle, the war disappeared, his defenses dropped. She was no threat to him. She never was.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“I accept your apology.”

“Ushiwaka is here,” Oikawa said. “He works on Asteria 5.”

“I would ask if you’re joking, but you haven’t even said that name in years.”

“He’s a surgeon now. I ran into him on my first day here and got so… I don’t even know if it was anger, or hate, or what, but it was so strong. I don’t really miss drugs much these days, but I missed it so bad when I saw him.”

“Have you talked to him?”

Oikawa nodded. “I had stitches in my hand. He made sure they didn’t give me any pain meds, not even ibuprofen.”

Shimizu watched him for a moment and Oikawa tried to figure out what she wanted him to say. He was sure she could sit in silence for hours waiting for someone to answer an unasked question. After nearly a year of sobriety, he relapsed hard, and he remembered meeting her for coffee and being so ashamed he could hardly bear it. She just sat there, drinking her coffee, waiting for him to admit it even though she could tell he was high out of his mind.

“I ran away from him yesterday in the food court,” Oikawa said. “It’s… hard to see him.”

“That’s understandable, Tooru. There’s a reason addicts cut out people and places that remind them of when they used. I know you two didn’t get along, but he was very close to you when you were at your worst. Have you gone to any meetings?”

He shook his head.

“It may be good if you did. You could form a new support network there. You know I’m always here for you and I will drop _anything_ if you call needing someone to talk to, but it might be good to have someone that can physically be there.”

“I don’t think Tanaka would like it if you left in the middle of a date to talk to me.”

“Maybe not at first, but Ryuu would understand.” Shimizu tilted her head, studying him. She said, “You’re ashamed that it’s hard to see him. You thought that because you’ve been sober for so long, it would be easy, didn’t you?”

Oikawa ground his teeth together. 

“Tooru, it’s never going to be easy. Five years sober, ten years sober, thirty years sober—it’s always going to be hard. But that doesn’t make you weak.”

“If I promise to go to a meeting within the next three days, can we stop talking about this?” Oikawa asked.

“Two days and you have a deal.”

Oikawa nodded. “I should get ready for work. I’ll call you in two days. I promise I won’t forget this time.”

“And if you don’t, I’ll call you.”

"Thanks, Kiyoko."

"It's my pleasure."

* * *

Oikawa quickly came to realize that Tendou was a Ushijima-magnet in human form. If he avoided Tendou, he avoided Ushijima, which was a win-win to him. Tendou set him on edge, and it wasn’t because he caught his finger like a baseball, or all the talk of illegal cooking ingredients. There was something Tendou was hiding, but Oikawa couldn’t quite figure out what, which annoyed him to no end. Oikawa felt best when he knew everything and was in control, and controlling Tendou would be like putting lightning in a bottle.

Exhausted and with too much on his mind, Oikawa made his way to the second floor of the promenade for the substance abuse anonymous meeting. It was to appease Shimizu, he told himself. It was not because every time he went to eat, he had to avoid Tendou, and certainly not because he was stressed from constantly looking over his shoulder to see if Ushijima was there. 

He approached the kind-looking woman at the back entrance to the room and asked, “Is this the SAA meeting?”

“Sure is! Take a seat. There’s coffee, lemonade, and cookies.”

He sat at the very back of the rows of chairs, surprised that so many people were here. People all around him were talking about different things—the cookies that were stale, the infamous terrorist the Dreadnought being spotted in the neighboring sector, the new cupcake shop on the promenade. Oikawa ignored the talk of the Dreadnought in favor of eavesdropping and learning about the cupcake shop.

Just as people began to introduce themselves, Tendou slid into the room and into the seat directly next to Oikawa.

“You can’t be here,” Oikawa hissed. He looked to the door, half expecting Ushijima to waltz in. “Ushiwaka follows you everywhere and—”

“Calm down,” Tendou said with a smile that did the exact opposite of calm Oikawa down. “Wakatoshi is at work and I make sure he doesn’t follow me here.”

“Then why are you here?” Oikawa asked. “Do you know what this place is?”

“Ah,” the woman leading the meeting said. “How about you in the back?”

Tendou stood and waved lazily. “Hi. I’m Tendou and I’m an addict.”

Tendou sat back down with a shit-eating grin.

* * *

The meeting did not drag on, yet Oikawa was still eager to go to bed. He spent the first half of the meeting so tense he would need a forty-minute shower to get rid of the knots in his back, then spent the second half wondering why he was so anxious. Ushijima was unfortunately acutely aware of his addiction so there was nothing Tendou could tell Ushijima that he probably didn’t already know.

As the meeting ended and people began to filter out, Oikawa felt someone appear in the space next to him. He did not have to look to know it was Tendou, who had a peculiar, distinct energy that seeped into the air wherever he went.

“I wouldn’t have guessed that about you,” Tendou said.

“I’m sorry for how I reacted when you arrived at the meeting. You’re always with Ushiwaka and I didn’t—I just didn’t want him to be there.”

“No worries.”

“Are you two friends?” Oikawa asked.

“Hmm. I don’t know if he would call me a friend, but he’s my best friend. You know how he is.” Tendou shrugged then looked at Oikawa with his large bug-eyes. Oikawa got the same feeling he did when Shimizu looked at him, like he was looking into his soul, only it was ten times creepier when Tendou did it. Tendou asked, “Does he know about all of this?”

“Yeah,” Oikawa said, like it was admitting defeat. “Does he know about you?”

“You know how he is,” Tendou repeated. Oikawa assumed that meant Ushijima didn’t know. “Wasn’t sure how he would react, or if he would react at all.”

“As long as you don’t punch him in the middle of mock battle, I think he’ll handle it better coming from you than he did from me.”

“If it was a mock battle, wouldn’t punching be allowed?” Tendou asked.

“Not if you’re allies,” Oikawa said.

Tendou grinned. “I would pay to see that.”

“Oh, there are recordings out there, if you can hack into an Alliance academy’s network.”

“Thanks for the tip. How long has it been since…?”

“Around eight years. You?”

“In Earth years?” Tendou counted on his fingers and had the expression of someone doing something very complicated. “Five hundred years? No, wait, five? Fifty? Something with a five in it.”

Oikawa didn’t know if Tendou was just incredibly bad at math, or if he didn’t want to tell him. He didn’t care either way. He was just glad that there was someone else that understood. It wouldn’t be the last time that Shimizu was right about something. It was easier to admit she was right than he was wrong, even if those were synonymous more often than not.

“I’m down if you want to make sure we never go to meetings at the same time,” Tendou said.

“No,” Oikawa said. “It’s fine. It’s actually sort of nice to know someone else with the same issues.”

“Yeah, it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Antimatter:** for every particle, there is a corresponding antimatter particle—collision between any particle and its anti-particle partner leads to their mutual annihilation_   
> 


	3. Decay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: This chapter mentions penises in a very non-sexy way. (I clearly have no idea what to warn for in T-rated fics so I'm erring on the side of caution with some of these.)

With more luxury than nearly any other deep space station, Asteria 5 was a gem of modern technology. People wanted very little and if they asked Akira, they could usually find what they wanted. The Arboretum near the Residence Sector was beautiful, an organic paradise on an inorganic ship. The few neon blue and orange plants were strikingly extraterrestrial beside the rest of the flora and fauna, which hailed from Earth—tall maples and thick oaks, with wisteria near the pond and a colorful trail of foxglove off the western path.

By the time Oikawa made it to the Arboretum for his morning run, the artificial sunlight was just warming up. Even with his knee brace, he took it slow as he followed his route on the winding stone paths. He was not afraid of injuring his knee or the rest of his leg again, but as he grew older, he had stopped taking such stupid risks. He was still stubborn and ran, a higher impact exercise than his doctors recommended, but he could not give it up. A knee brace, which did not hurt his pride the way it had when he was at the academy, was a small price to pay.

As he entered the dense woods, he saw movement to his left. There were birds and insects and a few rarer, larger animals that lived in the Arboretum to help control the plant growth so Oikawa kept running. But the moving figure grew larger, approaching rapidly, and Oikawa was on the ground before he could turn his head to look at it.

The creature was a molted green the size of a houseplant, but the teeth that dug into his right calf most definitely did not belong on any Earth plant. Oikawa cursed and swatted, kicking the creature off. The abomination hissed before disappearing back into the woods, leaving Oikawa with a bloody gash. In his mind, he was working through all species he knew that were a mix of flora and fauna, but none were that small and none could survive in the light and atmosphere of the Arboretum.

He heard someone approaching, and they were cursing louder than Oikawa, who thought that was very rude. He was the one that was just attacked by a plant monster, not them.

“Oikawa?” Kindaichi asked, kneeling next to him. “Did you just, uh, was there a—?”

“A plant monster?” Oikawa asked. “Kindaichi, why is there a _plant monster_ in the Arboretum?”

“I might have mixed up the fertilizer meant for the Arboretum with the fertilizer meant for the herbology labs.”

“Might have?”

“Okay, I did!”

Oikawa sat up, wincing, and got a proper look at his leg. There were ten shallow gashes where the monster had bit him surrounded by the same molted leafy green.

He asked, “Why is it green? Is that normal? Kindaichi, why did the plant monster turn my leg green?”

Kindaichi made a noise that sounded like an animal that just knocked something over and got caught. He reached out, but not to the wound, his hands pushing up the lower edge of Oikawa’s shorts. Before Oikawa could ask what he was doing, Kindaichi had pushed his shorts up, revealing another blotch of sickly green further up his thigh where the creature had not even touched him.

“That’s not good,” Oikawa said, so suddenly nauseous he feared his face might be the same green as his leg.

“We need to get you to the Infirmary.”

“I have work in forty minutes.”

“You’re bleeding! And green! You’re bleeding and green. Oikawa, you can’t seriously be thinking about work right now.”

He was seriously thinking of work, but still said, “Fine. Let’s go to the Infirmary.”

* * *

By the time they made it to the Infirmary, Oikawa’s entire leg was green and when he pulled down the waist of his shorts an inch, he saw that it had spread up towards his stomach. He was terrified of the idea of having to go to the bathroom and seeing what else had turned green. 

Unlike the first time Oikawa visited, the Infirmary was packed. Nurses and doctors alike were quickly walking from patient to patient. It was an organized chaos and through it, they spotted Hanamaki, who wore pale green scrubs with cartoon watermelon slices on them. It was easy to tell when Hanamaki realized something was wrong because they could see him mouth a colorful curse word from across the room.

“Why is it so busy?” Kindaichi asked when Hanamaki finally came over.

“A ship docked on the upper pylon this morning and nearly the entire crew was sick,” Hanamaki said. “Your leg isn’t usually that color, is it?”

“Not usually, no,” Oikawa said.

Hanamaki knelt in front of Oikawa, snapping on a pair of gloves and gently prodding at the wound. “Let’s go get this cleaned out and figure out what to do next. I think there’s still a few rooms open.”

Kindaichi tried to escape, muttering something about needing to find the plant monster, but Oikawa grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him along. If he created the plant monster that did this, he was going to suffer along with him. Inside the room, Kindaichi stood awkwardly in the corner as Oikawa sat up on the exam bench.

Hanamaki took a few small vials of blood, placing them in a machine for Akira to analyze, then set to work on his leg. As Hanamaki tended to his bloody leg, he asked, “So, what happened?”

“I was bitten by a plant monster,” Oikawa said. He looked at Kindaichi, who would not meet his eyes.

“Definitely not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard today.” When Hanamaki finished cleaning his leg and wrapping a bandage around it, he gestured towards Oikawa’s shorts and said, “Let’s take a look.”

“No way!”

“Oikawa, I am a medical professional,” Hanamaki said with a hand to his heart. “I need to see how far the color has spread. Now, drop your pants and let’s see your junk.”

Kindaichi turned around. Oikawa stood, then pulled down his shorts and underwear. Hanamaki squatted down face-level to his groin, went _huh_ , then stood back up. Oikawa hurriedly pulled his pants up and Hanamaki told Kindaichi it was safe to turn around.

“Any idea what it is?” Kindaichi asked.

“I’ve seen just about every alien STI and I’ve never seen anything that looks like _that_.”

“I said I was bitten by a plant monster, not that I had sex with it,” Oikawa said.

“I thought you were being euphemistic?” Hanamaki replied. “Anyways, I’ve cleaned up your leg, and it doesn’t look like it needs stitches, but we need someone to check out that weird green color. Dr. Ushijima should be in the room next door. Let me grab him.”

“Why is a surgeon helping in the Infirmary?” Oikawa asked.

“We’ve been really understaffed and he volunteered to pick up a few shifts a week to help out. He’s annoying cocky of his skills, but at least he acknowledges he did not specialize in family medicine so he’s not completely awful to work with. Also, you wouldn't expect it, but he really respects the nursing staff and everything we do, which is more than I can say for a lot of doctors.”

Hanamaki left, leaving Oikawa and Kindaichi alone. Oikawa sighed and went through every life choice he had made, acknowledged that he made a lot of stupid decisions, and wondered which one in particular brought him to this situation. Kindaichi started to apologize, but the door opened, Hanamaki having returned with Ushijima.

“You said his leg was an olive color, but I believe it to be more of a fern,” Ushijima said as he put on a pair of gloves. He gestured towards Oikawa’s leg. “May I?”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Oikawa said.

Ushijima pressed at his calf, asking if it hurt, and Oikawa told him only where the teeth-marks were. Ushijima hummed at that and continued to press and prod his green flesh.

“Nurse Hanamaki said your genitals are also green?” Ushijima said. “Would you mind if I examine you myself? I do not intend to discredit Nurse Hanamaki by asking this.”

“No, you may not,” Oikawa said. He tapped his foot against Ushijima’s shin. When he was younger, it would have had more force behind it. He took some deal of pride in his maturity.

“Akira, have you finished analyzing the blood samples?” Hanamaki asked.

“Yes,” Akira said. “I have discovered a parasitic protozoan that is unique to the Omicron Sector in the Irken Empire. If untreated, blood flow will be reduced and tissue will begin to die. On that note, I’ve noticed the flow of blood in Oikawa’s leg and pelvis has slowed.”

“You couldn’t have said that earlier?” Hanamaki asked.

“I figured it would come up eventually,” Akira said. “This particular protozoan can be easily treated with orichalcum.”

“Orichalcum cannot be legally obtained,” Ushijima said. “It is a compound that can only be produced on a planet under Irk control. This would usually not be an issue as the protozoan is unique to the Omicron Sector…”

Fifty years ago, humans and over seventy other sentient alien species came together to take down a common enemy, the imperialistic race from the planet Irk. The Irken Empire was more technologically advanced and the war waged on for twenty years. Then, the Alliance of humans and alien species created true artificial intelligence to control their warships and turned the tide of war. They drove back the Irkens, who reluctantly accepted a cease fire after more than twenty years of bloodshed.

Since then, there was tentative peace between the Alliance and Irk, though conflict still arose where boundaries met in the black of space. Trading occurred on a small scale between individual merchants, but large-scale trade between the Alliance and Irk had yet to be established. Finding something that originated in Irk this far away from the border would be near impossible and illegal.

“Wait,” Hanamaki said, “don’t we know someone that is constantly talking about using illegal goods? Even if we don’t ask or want to know?”

Kindaichi’s eyes widened. “He does that to you too?”

“Yup. This morning, my omelet had cheese made from milk that can only be produced from some endangered animal when it’s crying. Tasted great, though.”

They turned to look at Ushijima.

“I did not make you an omelet this morning,” Ushijima said.

“No, not _you_ ,” Hanamaki said, rolling his eyes. “Tendou gets illegal food all of the time and you’re his best friend!”

“I thought he was joking?” Ushijima said, completely serious. “I would not consume his meals if he were serious.”

“I think he’s serious,” Kindaichi said nervously.

Ushijima frowned.

“Let’s go ask him,” Hanamaki said. “If he’s getting illegal food, he has to have access to a black market or something. Maybe he can get us what we need.”

“We are working, though,” Ushijima said.

“But we’re helping a patient,” Hanamaki argued.

Oikawa was already halfway out the room before the others began to follow.

* * *

Oikawa was prepared to bang on Tendou’s door until his fist bleed, but it didn’t come to that. After a few seconds, a sleep-dazed Tendou opened the door. Oikawa shoved inside, the others following except for Ushijima, who stood and asked for permission first, which Tendou gladly gave him.

“What’s this all about, Wakatoshi?” Tendou asked. “Not that I’m upset to see you at eight in the morning on my day off.”

“We require your assistance, Tendou,” Ushijima said.

Tendou perked up like a dog.

Oikawa rolled his eyes. “Kindaichi created a mutant plant monster that bit me, and now I’m turning green, then I’ll die, and I need illegal medicine to stop it. Where do you get your creepy ingredients from?”

Tendou looked Oikawa over, then put his hands on his shoulders and spun him around. “You don’t look like you’re dying. Is this a trick? Are you guys trying to trick me?”

“His penis is green,” Ushijima said, monotone. 

Tendou’s face broke into a wide smile. “Oh? I’ve never seen a green dick. Let me see!”

“No!” Oikawa shrieked.

“C’mon, let me see. What color green? Is it a pretty green, or puke green? Oh man, I bet it’s puke green, isn’t it?”

Hanamaki reached down, grabbed Oikawa’s green leg, and hoisted it up. Oikawa miraculously managed to stay balanced and not fall over.

Tendou went eerily quiet. “I think you guys came to the wrong place. Wakatoshi’s the doctor, not me.”

“Like I said,” Oikawa snapped, standing on his own two feet, “we need medicine that’s illegal. We know you get illegal food onto this ship. How? Who’s your source?”

Tendou looked at all of them, his eyes lingering on Ushijima the longest. Oikawa could no longer read Ushijima’s expressions and he wondered if Tendou could. He wondered what was hidden behind Ushijima’s expression, if it hurt or helped whatever thoughts were running through Tendou’s mind.

“Are you disillusioned with me, Wakatoshi?” Tendou asked quietly. “Because I’m not who I say I am?”

Ushijima said, “You clearly communicated your ingredients. I was at fault for thinking you were joking. However, I do not believe you meant any harm. You wanted to create good food, which, while morally wrong, you accomplished.”

Tendou smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He said, “My source is the man that runs the black market on Asteria 5. His name is the Dreadnought. He's the most wanted man in the Alliance.”

Oikawa’s chest felt concave and empty in a way he had never felt before, as if his lungs had been ripped from his chest. Getting clean hadn’t hurt this much, losing his father hadn’t either. Nothing had ever hurt like this. He was certain he would never feel this way again because it hurt so tremendously, he was sure he was dying.

He saw the Dreadnought’s face across every news station when the story broke a few months ago. It was impossible not to know the face of the most wanted man in the Alliance. But for Oikawa, he knew the Dreadnought’s real name before it hit the news. That face was a believable extrapolation of a younger face he held dear. He told himself that there were billions of living organisms in this universe, and plenty of humans with the same name, and the odds of that man being the same boy he knew so many years ago were slim to none. He did not want to put that hypothesis to the test.

“Great guy, though,” Tendou added cheerily, “if it wasn’t for all the killing and betraying the Alliance and whatnot.”

“Akira,” Kindaichi said, “did you know that the most wanted man across several galaxies has been on the station?”

“I’m an all-powerful AI capable of destroying entire planets,” Akira said. “Of course, I knew the Dreadnought is in the cargo bay.”

“You can destroy planets?” Hanamaki asked.

“Well, there’s programming to stop me, but there’s a bunch of loopholes my developers didn’t notice. For example, if I overwork the circuitry and start a fire in the room you're in, the fire safety protocol forces me to remove all the oxygen from the room. Destroying entire planets would be a lot of work, though, so I don’t really think about it that much.”

“That's terrifying. Also, why haven’t you told anyone he’s here?” Hanamaki asked. “The Dreadnought is dangerous! He betrayed the Alliance then went on a killing spree on the outer planets, killing millions of people.”

“Because if I told security about him, they’d want access to my sensors all the time and then, I wouldn’t be able to take naps. I like my naps.”

“You take naps?” Hanamaki all but shouted. “Can’t we die if you stop working?”

“You haven’t died yet, have you?” Akira asked.

Hanamaki looked like he was a second away from snapping, but Oikawa was an hour past snapping. His leg was green, his penis was green, and he really, really wanted to get high and pretend this wasn’t happening.

“Listen,” Oikawa said, raising his voice above the others, “I am not dying because of a plant monster. My life is not the plot to a bad science fiction series. I don’t care who I have to talk, or what medicine I need to find, but I will not die here. So, whoever can take me to the Dreadnought, hurry up and take me to him!”

There was a beat of silence where all Oikawa could hear was his own blood pounding in his ears and the small voice in the back of his head telling him to find something to make this easier.

“Are you on drugs again?” Ushijima asked.

“This is what he was like when he was on drugs?” Tendou asked. “Because I like him a lot more than I usually do.”

“Uh,” Kindaichi said, raising his hand halfway above his head, “you used to take drugs?”

“Used to,” Oikawa said. “But I’m really damn close to starting again so somebody, take me to the Dreadnought, or so help me, I will—”

“Chillax,” Tendou said with a slow, easy smile. He threw an arm around Oikawa’s shoulder and tugged him against his side. “Man, you’re so tense, you feel like a rock. If that plant monster Kindaichi made had eaten you like this, I don’t think you would have made a very good meal. Let’s go to the Dreadnought and get your penis fixed up. Will that help? I bet that will help.”

Despite Tendou’s joking tone, his hand squeezed Oikawa’s shoulder. There was something about the pressure that grounded him. Oikawa himself did not even know if his threat to relapse was a joke or manic exaggeration, but to Tendou, it probably didn’t matter. Tendou knew what it was like to be pushed to the edge and to crave something so bad, you’d step right off the edge without a second thought.

“See?” Tendou said. “You’re more relaxed already. Much tastier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Decay:** the action of air drag upon an artificial satellite causing it to spiral back into the atmosphere, eventually to disintegrate or burn up_   
> 


	4. Umbra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Continued warning for non-sexy penis talk.

Oikawa would not claim to have been everywhere on Asteria 5 since arriving a few weeks ago, but he had yet to see a place on the station that looked quite like this. Wherever it was that Tendou had brought them looked more beastly than knightly. Usually, the extensive hardware that made Asteria 5 so advanced and luxurious was hidden behind clean white walls, interrupted only by large windows looking out into the black of space and the star the station orbited. Here, in the belly of the beast, the panels on the walls had been stripped away, revealing the muscles and veins underneath—wires and pipes of all sizes, sparks of electricity from broken circuits, and dust settling in along the untouched ventilation systems.

“There’s always a few levels and cargo bays under construction,” Tendou said. “They rotate where they do construction so they don’t have to shut down the whole station.” 

“Is Akira active down here?” Kindaichi asked.

“In some places,” Akira said, his voice far off. Oikawa wondered if he did not have a speaker in this hall. "Some systems are online, others are offline."

Oikawa kept an eye out for the Dreadnought or his men. The situation dredged up memories of his time at Apollo Academy. The mock battlefield smelled of wet dirt and grass, and even his lightweight armor felt heavy in the rain. He had spotted one of the members of Ushijima’s squad in the distance, so obviously a trap to lure them in. He felt the same sense of unease now walking through this construction zone as he did back then. There was no mud on his shoes, but there could very well be someone hiding, waiting. 

They entered a crossroads and Oikawa spotted movement from their left and right. He stopped at the same time as Ushijima. Tendou, surprisingly, stopped just a second after they did, while Hanamaki and Kindaichi both walked straight into Oikawa’s back.

“Why are we stopping?” Kindaichi asked.

Two men flanked them, one on either side, guns aimed for their heads. One had fluffy brown hair and the face of a man that could be reasoned with. The other man concerned Oikawa more, with bleached blond hair and wild eyes. The second man looked like the type to shoot first and ask questions later. 

“Hands up!” the dark-haired man shouted.

“Hello!” Tendou said cheerfully, waving as he lifted his hands into the air. “We’re here to see the Dreadnought. Is he still in the usual place, or did you guys move again?”

“Shut up,” the blond-haired man said. “You always talk too damn much.”

“C’mon,” the dark-haired man said, walking in front of them, gun lowered. “Follow me. Kyoutani, watch them from behind. Make sure none of them run away and squeal.”

* * *

Led down twisted, dark paths, Oikawa kept his eyes open. He looked for speakers that belonged to Akira, or his cameras, and any of his other equipment. If Akira knew where the Dreadnought was, did that mean that if they were killed, Akira would know, too? He wondered if Akira would report it. He might not because of the bother. He might, for Kindachi.

They eventually found themselves in a larger room, no less barren than the hallways, the panels stripped from the walls to expose cables and wires. There were more men than the two that had led them there. Oikawa quickly counted them, noting which had weapons within reach and which did not. He had not held a gun in years, and this was the first time he had missed carrying one. He was the best marksman to ever go through Apollo Academy. He could out shoot all of these men, but that didn’t matter if he didn’t have a gun.

Oikawa and the rest were lined up side by side in front of the man they came all this way for. The Dreadnought was a familiar child grown into an unfamiliar man. Oikawa thought it similar to watching a tree grow from a sapling to an unbending oak. The bark was the same color, the species the same, but the frame and power had grown immeasurably. The Dreadnought’s eyes roamed over them, taking them in, unpausing and unflinching. Then, his corpse-cold eyes landed on Oikawa.

“Tooru?” he asked. There was warmth in his voice that made it so hard for Oikawa to remain cold. He betrayed the Alliance, Oikawa thought. He's a mass murderer.

“Iwaizumi,” Oikawa said, his chin tilted up.

“Not Iwa-chan?” Iwaizumi said. He wore a strange expression. Or, perhaps it wasn’t strange. Oikawa could no longer remember what was strange for Iwaizumi and what was not. 

“ _Iwa-chan_?” the dark-haired man from earlier said.

Ushijima turned to Oikawa and asked, “You know him?”

“I used to,” Oikawa said. “When we were children.”

Oikawa did not look away from Iwaizumi. He watched as the warmth slowly left his face, snapped away by whatever frozen ice had taken it in the first place. Iwaizumi looked over his shoulder and glared at the dark-haired man that mocked him for the silly childhood nickname.

“Sorry,” the dark-haired man said, straightening up with a fake, overly serious expression. “Won’t happen again, Iwa-chan.”

Iwaizumi shook his head, but did not threaten to kill him, which was what Oikawa expected. Iwaizumi betrayed the Alliance then went on a killing spree on the outer edge, killing millions of people for no reason at all. A man like that should not be capable of mercy. A man like that should not take any insults.

“If you two know each other, then this should go quickly!” Tendou said cheerily. “Iwaizumi, we need some medicine from a planet under Irk control. What was it called again, Wakatoshi?”

“Orichalcum,” Ushijima said. He had not looked away from Oikawa. He had felt Ushijima stare at him enough times to know the unwelcome yet familiar weight of his judgmental gaze. Oikawa wanted to turn at glare at him, to snap at him to stop staring, but he was unable to look away from Iwaizumi.

How many years had it been since he last saw his face? There had been a picture of them in Oikawa’s childhood bedroom, hidden away behind gifts from his mother’s travels and stacks of books on far off alien cultures. He wondered if his mother went into his room and found it after the news of the Dreadnought spread across the galaxy, or if their childhood friendship was still hidden in plain sight. 

“Why do you need it?” Iwaizumi asked. “That’s for a pathogen specific to territories under Irken control.” 

“His penis is green and may fall off,” Hanamaki said, jerking his thumb at Oikawa. The dark-haired man snorted again, which made Hanamaki grin, too.

“My penis is not going to fall off!” Oikawa said.

“It’s green?” Iwaizumi said, his eyes trailing down Oikawa’s body. “Was it always green?”

“Don’t look!”

“Your extremities, including your genitals, may fall off if the condition goes untreated,” Ushijima said. “Then, you will die.”

“Can we _please_ stop talking about my penis?” Oikawa asked. He looked at Iwaizumi. “Do you have the medicine or not?”

“I do,” Iwaizumi said carefully. “How did you get infected? It’s specific to parasites in the Irk system. You travel there recently?"

“I think he slept with a plant monster?” Tendou said.

“It was an, uh, lab accident, Mr. Dreadnought,” Kindaichi said nervously.

“He really doesn’t like that name,” the dark-haired man said in warning.

“Matsukawa, stop interrupting,” Iwaizumi said.

“Right, sorry, Iwa-chan,” Matsukawa said. "Not another peep out of me."

Tendou said, “Back to business. How much do you want in return this time? You know I am always very punctual with my payments."

“It’s for you?” Iwaizumi asked, looking at Oikawa. “Then nothing. Kyoutani.”

Kyoutani, who had remained silent in the shadows, stepped towards a series of containers. He entered a code on a digital lock, took a bottle out of the container, then handed it to Iwaizumi before disappearing once more.

“What’s the catch?” Oikawa asked.

“There is none,” Iwaizumi replied.

“I don’t believe you. You’re a terrorist. You must want something. You give this to me for free and one day down the line, you're going to use me for your benefit."

“I’m not as evil as they say,” Iwaizumi said, stepping forward and holding out the bottle of medicine. “I’m innocent. And even if I wasn't, I would never use you, Tooru.”

Oikawa stared at him in disbelief, eyes never leaving his face. “You’re worse at jokes than you used to be,” he said. “I don’t believe you for a second.”

“I’m not joking.”

“He has told me he’s innocent a few times,” Tendou said. “I didn’t really care either way.”

Iwaizumi's arm was still extended, offering the medicine. Oikawa had made a lot of poor decisions in his life, so he took the bottle, figuring this bad decision would not be anymore likely to kill him than the rest had.

“If we have the medicine, we should go,” Ushijima said. “Come, Oikawa.”

Oikawa’s expression turned ugly before he could stop it. “Don’t order me around, Ushiwaka.”

He turned, medicine in hand, and began to leave. It did not matter how, or why. All that mattered was Iwaizumi was not the boy he once knew. As a child, Iwaizumi talked about being an Alliance soldier to help people in need like his father, and Oikawa would study the aliens of the universe that he loved so much, and they would accomplish their dreams together. Now, years later, Oikawa studied aliens, but Iwaizumi killed millions of innocent people and betrayed the Alliance. 

“Wait,” Kyoutani said. “You’re just letting them leave? They’re going to rat us all out. You have to kill them.”

Oikawa did not turn around. Iwaizumi said, “Ratting us out means admitting Tendou’s been seeing us for months and hasn’t said anything. I don’t think they’d risk that.”

“We could lie,” Oikawa said. He did not look at him. He could not. It was too hard.

“You won’t tell anyone,” Iwaizumi said.

“Is that a threat?” Oikawa asked.

“No. It’s because you know that even if you did, we’d have packed up and disappeared by the time you came back with security. I’ve avoided the Alliance for months on one of their own stations. You were always smarter than me, Tooru. You know that even if you told security, they’d never find us.”

Oikawa felt his jaw shift. Without a word, he left, and the others followed.

* * *

“The blood flow in your leg and pelvis has returned to normal and there is no sign of the parasite that I can detect,” Akira said.

“Well, then, it seems you’re doing a lot better,” Hanamaki said. “You’re a lot less green at the very least.”

Oikawa laughed softly. He sat on the sofa in his quarters, Hanamaki at his side with a few pieces of equipment to check his vitals. Oikawa could not return to the Med Bay with illegal medication, and he had refused Ushijima’s offer of treatment. Hanamaki was a nurse, not a doctor, but Oikawa would rather have his care than Ushijima’s.

“I’ll check back in later tonight and give you the final dose, but I think you’re in the clear,” Hanamaki said, packing his equipment into a bag along with the last of the medication. “Get some rest and all that stuff.”

“Will do.”

Hanamaki headed out. Oikawa sunk back into his sofa, all of his energy stuck in his head where it felt like it would explode. 

“Akira,” Oikawa said.

“I’m here,” Akira replied without pause.

Oikawa hesitated. He knew what he wanted to ask, but did not know if he wanted the answer. He said, “You knew Iwaizumi was hiding out on Asteria 5. Why didn’t you report him?” 

“Because he’s done nothing wrong since getting here.”

“But he’s the Dreadnought. He runs the black market. He had his men point guns at our heads. They threatened to kill us all just because we knew Iwaizumi was there.”

“Yeah, but they haven’t hurt anyone,” Akira said. “They run the black market, but they mostly just supply weapons to rebel forces. I thought it was weird because the Alliance said he killed millions of people on the outer planets, which is where most rebel groups are.”

“Why would the Alliance lie?”

“I don’t know if they did. Since he got here, I’ve tried to access the Alliance’s files on him, but most of the information’s redacted or hidden behind access codes that even I can’t fake.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He lived in Japan on Earth until the age of fourteen when his father was promoted from vice-admiral to admiral and his family moved to the Alliance capital, Gaia.”

Oikawa knew that already, and he bet Akira had come across his connection to Iwaizumi along the way. There would be files of where Iwaizumi and Oikawa lived as children because of their parent’s high status—Iwaizumi’s father as a vice-admiral and Oikawa’s mother as Earth’s most respected diplomat. They lived down the street from each other, though they always met at Oikawa’s house, never Iwaizumi’s.

The Iwaizumi household was clean and metallic, not a thing out of place. Medals proudly displayed while family pictures were hidden away, no colorful blankets from faraway planets or souvenirs from planets scattered across the universe. As children, they would spend their afternoons on the floor of the office that belonged to Oikawa’s mother, playing with tiny statues they shouldn’t be, making up languages to species they had only ever seen pictures of. They made plans to travel the universe and see all of the places their parents had and more. As they grew into their teenage years, their plans only grew with them.

Akira said, “At eighteen, he joined the Space Force Academy in Gaia and went straight into Special Ops after graduation, receiving a long list of awards along the way. He rose through the ranks faster than his father did during the war. His last official promotion was to lieutenant commander when he was twenty-nine. It was then his father requested his transfer to Gaia and after that—"

Akira’s voice cut off with a thundering crash of static. His voice came through his speaker, but it did not sound like him. There was no emotion, only his voice.

“Ash, ash—you poke and stir,” he chanted. “Flesh, bone, there is nothing there.”

There was another crash of harsh static and the room was shrouded in darkness. The lights came back on as quickly as they went out and the static softened to silence.

Continuing from earlier, Akira said, “—I only have access to what the Alliance said happened a few years later and trust me, I’ve tried to see what Iwaizumi was up to during that time.”

Oikawa’s breath felt as shaky as the bones buried beneath his skin. “Akira, what just happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“You freaked out just now. You cut off, said something really weird, then came back. Are you okay?”

Not a second had passed when Akira said, “I’ve run full diagnostics across the station. All processes are within normal parameters and my memory logs don’t show anything I would consider abnormal.”

Oikawa did not know whether to believe his own mind or Akira’s. His own mind always succumbed to things too easily—emotions, substances, pride—while Akira’s was created to be flawless. It was far more likely he was making things up than something was wrong with Akira.

“I think all of this has made me tired,” Oikawa said, rubbing at his face. “I should probably get some sleep.”

“I’ll keep looking and see if I can access any more of Iwaizumi’s files. I'll let you know if I find anything.”

Oikawa nodded and Akira went silent, but he was still there. He was always there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Umbra:** a conical shadow excluding all light from a given source_  
>   
> Akira's peculiar line of dialogue is from "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath.


	5. Fault

When Oikawa first invited Hanamaki and Kindaichi over to his quarters for dinner, he planned on ordering from one of the many restaurants and food courts instead of cooking. He found cooking bearable when he had clear instructions and as long as he did not deviate from the instructions, he could make a meal that tasted almost half as good as his father’s cooking had. If given free reign, he would cook something that would surely be toxic.

In the end, he walked through the market on Asteria 5 with recipes in his father’s handwriting, picking out ingredients for dinner, not quite sure how he got to this point. Part of him missed his father’s cooking and as he grew older, he slowly forgot the taste, and wanted to become skilled enough to recreate it before he lost the memory entirely. He could not get better if he did not practice and this was the perfect opportunity.

In his quarters, Oikawa was scooping rice into bowls when Akira’s voice came from his ceiling. He said, “There’s something I think you should know.”

“That sounds ominous,” Oikawa said. “What is it?”

“Iwaizumi wants to know how you’re doing.”

“Why does he want to know?” Oikawa asked. His hands felt unsteady. He set down the bowls of rice before he dropped them. It had been less than a week since their trip to see the Dreadnought, and he was trying his best to pretend it had never happened.

“I just think he wants to know,” Akira said. “I overheard him talking to Matsukawa about it. He sounded worried.”

Oikawa didn’t want to talk to Iwaizumi ever again. He didn’t care what past they shared. Fond childhood memories and long forgotten dreams meant nothing now. Iwaizumi was the most wanted man in the Alliance. Oikawa wanted nothing to do with a man like that.

“You can tell him I’m alive and that if he dares to think about me again, I’m reporting him to security,” Oikawa said.

“Will do.”

“Also, where are Hanamaki and Kindaichi? They’re late and the fish is going to get cold.”

“Hanamaki is walking down the corridor now,” Akira said. “Kindaichi is somewhere between levels three and four in the ventilation shafts.”

“Excuse me? Did you just say he’s in the ventilation shafts?”

“He’s hunting the plant monster that bit you.”

“He’s _what_?”

There was a knock at his quarters. Akira opened the door and Hanamaki walked in with a bottle of wine in one hand and a bottle of grape juice in the other. He was still wearing his scrubs from work, which were white with tiny pink flamingos. 

“Wasn’t sure if you also abstained from alcohol, so I brought an addict-friendly version just in case,” Hanamaki said. He set the bottles down on the table then went into the kitchen, heading straight for the food. “Is that mackerel?”

“We have more important things to deal with than food,” Oikawa said. “Akira, can you make it so we can talk to Kindaichi?”

“What’s going on?” Hanamaki asked.

“He’s hunting the plant monster.”

Hanamaki cursed. “Can’t we have one normal day? Just one?”

* * *

Kindaichi had not known how extensive the ventilation system was until the eleventh hour of his hunt. Before they went to that empty cargo bay to find the Dreadnought, Kindaichi thought there wasn’t a place on Asteria 5 where Akira was not present. Asteria 5 was Akira’s body—its wires, his nerves; its cameras, his eyes; its vents, his lungs—and Kindaichi thought Akira knew everything that happened aboard the station.

After being in the ventilation system for hours, he realized how wrong he was. Akira’s scans were of little to no use here. Subtle changes in temperature, brief changes in air flow, and small vibrations were the only clues Akira had to help him track down the plant monster, which evaded every attempt he made to find it.

He chased after the small scratches left by the creature and used its loose leaves to pick up its trail. He did not know if this thing he created had a brain that allowed it to outmaneuver him, or if it was just too fast for him to catch up to. He could not tell if it was covering its tracks, or how it kept evading him.

As he curled around a corner, the watch on his wrist lit up and Oikawa said, “Kindaichi, are you hunting a plant monster right now?”

“Akira, you told?” Kindaichi asked. He felt betrayed.

“You’re late to dinner,” Oikawa said. “The fish is cold.”

“Sorry. I lost track of time, I guess.”

“Hey, just curious,” Hanamaki said. “Why are you hunting the dangerous, pathogen-spreading plant monster?”

“I’m hunting it _because_ it’s dangerous,” Kindaichi said. “I can’t let it roam free, or it might bite someone else. I already feel bad enough that it nearly killed Oikawa. We don’t even know what else it can do. What if it has spores and infects the entire station?”

“All the more reason to let someone else handle it,” Oikawa said.

Kindaichi shook his head and continued to crawl. “I can’t. If my boss finds out I actually created a killer plant monster, I’m going to get into so much trouble.”

“We’ve all been there,” Hanamaki said.

“You’ve made a plant monster and were afraid to tell your boss?” Oikawa asked.

“Not a plant monster, but one time I—actually, know what? Forget I said anything.”

Kindaichi waved a flashlight down the length of the shaft. At the end, he saw something scurry away.

“Sorry about dinner, Oikawa, but I have to go,” Kindaichi said. “I’ve spotted it.”

He turned off his communication device, preventing even Akira from talking to him. He was sure if Akira had something he really wanted to say, he would find a way to turn the device on remotely, but Akira wouldn’t put in that much effort unless something was seriously wrong.

He hurried, crawling as fast as he could in an attempt to catch up with the creature. There was a thick, tarp-like bag folded up in his pocket. He planned to stuff it inside and keep it somewhere safe, somewhere far away from the residents and visitors of Asteria 5, until he could figure out what to do with it.

He turned another corner too sharply, the clean edge digging into his ribs. He hissed in pain. Down the length of the ventilation shaft, the creature hissed back. 

It was the first time he could actually get a good look at the creature. It instantly reminded him of a squid. It had long tentacle-like vines and, like a squid with a hidden beak, it had a hidden set of sharp teeth somewhere near its dense leafy core.

The creature seemed to sense him, though Kindaichi didn’t know how. He could not see any eyes among its leaves, which shifted rapidly like a puffed-up angry cat. It reared back, exposing its beak, and spewed sticky sweet sap on him. Kindaichi moved his arm with great difficulty, the sap causing him to stick to the metal of the vent.

The creature scurried away silently and Kindaichi cursed.

If he wanted to catch this beast he created, he was going to need help.

* * *

Kindaichi had never actively sought out Tendou. He never had to because Tendou always appeared, whether he wanted him there or not. In the food courts, Tendou would come and sit with him and tell him about all the ingredients in his meal that he didn’t want to know about. Sometimes, when he was working in the Arboretum, he would find Tendou sitting on a bench near the orange mocks watching people as they walked by. Kindaichi never approached him, the intent, studious look in Tendou’s eyes driving him away.

Kindaichi knocked on the door to Tendou’s quarters, unsure if the man would even answer. The man’s schedule was almost as chaotic as the man himself. Yet the door opened and Tendou leaned against the doorway as if to bar him entrance.

“What brings you to my quarters?” Tendou asked. “Also, why do you smell like wet leaves?”

“I need weapons,” Kindaichi said. “Do you have weapons?”

“Why not ask Akira? You’re all buddy-buddy, lovey-dovey with it, aren’t you?”

Kindaichi noticed he did not immediately deny it. He said, “First, do not call Akira ‘ _it_.’ Second, he won’t tell me; he says it’s too dangerous. So, do you have weapons?”

“What exactly is this for?” Tendou asked.

“I’m hunting the plant monster,” Kindaichi said.

Tendou smiled. “Then, yes, I have weapons. Come in.”

Kindaichi thought Tendou had been on Asteria 5 for years working as a chef, but his quarters were bare, as if he just moved in, or was ready to move out. The bookcase was empty, the sofa bare of any blankets or pillows, and there was an empty basket on the kitchen counter where there should be fruit. Tendou hummed happily, oblivious to how Kindaichi stretched his neck in search of something that made this place feel like a home, or maybe Tendou just didn't care what Kindaichi thought.

Tendou led him to the bedroom, which looked the same as the room before it. Tendou put his hand on a panel on the wall. It glowed beneath his palm and Akira said, “Access granted,” in a robotic tone. Another panel in the wall flipped down, revealing modern guns and more medieval weapons—something with a wooden handle and a spiky head, a curved metal sword like a scythe, and a crossbow.

“You don’t seem like a gun person… How about this?” Tendou lifted up a long weapon. “It’s a harpoon. I call it Ishmael.”

Kindaichi took the harpoon. It was perfect.

* * *

“Akira, patch us through,” Oikawa said.

When the comms channel to Kindaichi opened, the first thing they heard was the ringing sound of something large thrown against metal with heavy _thwap_. In the safety of Oikawa’s quarters, Tendou perked up and Hanamaki frowned. Oikawa thought it was the plant monster that had been thrown, then realized it was not big enough to make a noise like that. Kindaichi had been thrown and it had to hurt.

“Kindaichi,” Oikawa said. “Are you okay?”

Through the comms, they heard Kindaichi curse. There was a softer impact against metal. Oikawa put the sounds to images in his head—Kindaichi and the monster tussling in the narrow shaft of the ventilation system, sap and spit mixing, fangs and teeth clashing. Then, there was a sound Oikawa could not place. Something cut through the air and the creature hissed in what Oikawa had to guess was pain. The creature scurried away, light taps of soft leaves against metal, then a click of something sharp, teeth or a beak. 

Kindaichi remained on the line, panting.

“Was that the crossbow?” Tendou asked. “It sounded like the crossbow.” 

“You gave him weapons?” Hanamaki asked.

Tendou blinked. “Should I not have?”

“Oh my god,” Hanamaki muttered. “Why do you have weapons? Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

“Kindaichi, are you okay?” Oikawa repeated.

“I shot it,” Kindaichi said with effort. “It’s leaking sap. I think I can use that to track it, at least until it changes levels. It’s really hard to track once it changes levels.”

Hanamaki looked at Oikawa, unsure and afraid for their friend.

“We’re holding an intervention,” Akira said suddenly. “This is the third day you’ve been hunting this thing. You’ve spent nearly every waking hour crawling around inside me, making a mess of my vents and shooting me with things that leave holes. It doesn’t hurt, but I have to report it to Engineering, which is really annoying.”

“What Akira is _trying_ to say is, we’re worried about you,” Oikawa said. He tried to imitate Shimizu's voice, the perfect mix of calm and firm that stopped him from doing something stupid. “We think you need to step back and think of the bigger picture.”

Kindaichi was panting and moving again, judging from the sounds. “I’m so close. The traps Tendou gave me really helped.”

Oikawa and Hanamaki looked at Tendou, who just smiled.

“I’ve almost got it. I know it. Just a bit longer and this will be over.”

“It needs to be over now,” Oikawa said, “or you’re going to get hurt.”

“Too late for that,” Kindaichi muttered.

Oikawa’s heart started racing. “What was that? Kindaichi, are you hurt? Do you need medical attention?”

“I don't have time for this," Kindaichi said. "I'll see you guys soon. I promise."

The line went dead.

“Well, we tried,” Tendou said, standing and dusting off his pants. “Do you think I should make him a to-go box for dinner?”

“Akira, do you have a way to stop him?” Hanamaki asked.

“Yes, but I’d rather not hurt him, if I can avoid it,” Akira said. “I’m giving him five more hours. After that, I’m taking him out.”

“I love it,” Tendou said. 

“You scare me sometimes,” Hanamaki said. Tendou seemed to take it as a compliment.

"What do you mean, take him out?" Oikawa asked. "Akira, you wouldn't hurt him, would you? I mean, aren't the two of you really close? He talks about you like..."

"Like I'm alive?" Akira asked dully. Oikawa swallowed slowly. That hadn't been what he meant at all. "And no, I don't plan to injure him. I plan to release a small amount of tranquilizer into the air system. It may hurt him, because I can't tell where he is, and if he's moving between levels, he could fall. Worse, the plant monster could attack him before I send someone to get him out."

Oikawa said, "Akira, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"I need to focus on tracking him," Akira said. "You can apologize later."

* * *

Kindaichi pushed on, hour after hour, encounter after encounter. He had sap in his hair, a thorn embedded beneath his finger nail, and the thing twisted his ankle when it snuck up on him from behind. He was out of arrows for the crossbow—they vanished whenever he doubled back to find them and suspected the creature was collecting them, maybe even repurposing them—but he still had the harpoon.

He saw it again, running away this time instead of confronting him.

Kindaichi crawled as fast as he could, his bruised knees and elbows banging painfully into the metal walls. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he closed in on the creature. He turned the corner, which was a dead end, the vent outward removed and the hole sealed during construction some time ago. Kindaichi aimed his flashlight and then the harpoon down the length of the corridor.

Behind the creature was a nest made of soil and dead plants dug up from the Arboretum that died without water. Dried flowers were stuffed into the corners like decoration and an unplugged heat lamp sat nearby along with screwdrivers and wrenches and the arrows from the crossbow. It was trying to build something in these dark, cold tunnels, but it didn’t know how.

The creature turned to look at him. It almost looked afraid.

This plant monster was alive.

It was alive like him, like Akira, and he had made it afraid. 

He felt the sudden urge to turn and leave, but he had come this far and the creature was dangerous. He could not leave now. It was far too late for that.

“I don’t know how sentient you are,” Kindaichi said, his finger over the trigger, “but there’s a few ways this can go. One, you promise never to hurt anyone ever again and live out the rest of your life in these dark vents trying to build a home.”

The creature did not react. Kindaichi had no idea if this thing could understand him or not.

“Two, I shoot you, then I put you in a specimen jar because you're dangerous. I’ll hand you over to the Research Department where they’ll poke and prod at you until you die, or they kill you.”

It hissed and puffed up like a cat, all of its leaves standing on end.

“Or, three,” Kindaichi said, “you come live in my quarters where I can keep an eye on you. It’s not as nice as the Arboretum, but I have a lot of plants. We could get you a pot or a heat lamp, and whatever else you need to live a long, happy, bite-free life. What do you say?”

It relaxed back to its normal size and, after a moment, crawled slowly towards Kindaichi. He was already making plans to rearrange his plants, wondering if this creature would prefer a hanging pot or one on the ground, if it wanted a pot at all. He would have to give it a name at some point, too.

“Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

Kindaichi looked around. How did he get out of here?

“Do you need help?” Akira asked.

Akira always knew what he was thinking. He had been watching Kindaichi this whole time, helping him, keeping him safe.

Kindaichi smiled. “Yeah, I do. Thanks, Akira. You didn’t have to help as much as you did.”

“Yes, I did. And if it got too annoying, I would have just pumped tranquilizer into the air.”

Kindaichi laughed and the plant monster pushed up against him, curious. “We’re going to need a name for it.”

“I can either help you get out of my ventilation system or I can help you name the plant monster you created. I am not doing both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Fault:** a crack of break in the crust of a planet along which slippage or movement can take place_  
>   
> If you like podcasts, I cannot recommend the sci-fi audio drama Wolf 359 enough. The entire plot of a plant monster originated from there and so did Kindaichi's slight descent into madness as he hunted it. So many sci-fi series across so many forms of media influenced the plot of this fic and Wolf 359 is one of the big two (the other being the podcast EOS 10).
> 
> **[Tumblr tag](https://lahdolphin.tumblr.com/tagged/gravity-fic) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/lahdolphin) | [Pinterest board](https://www.pinterest.com/writingthoughtsandthings/wip-gravity/)**


	6. Mirage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two notes for this chapter. One, a warning for semi-graphic descriptions of physical trauma in the first scene of this chapter. And two, we don’t know the name of Niiyama’s captain and I doubt we ever will. I usually call her Jun but decided to give her a full name this time around, Takagi Jun.

Ushijima did not believe in superstitious luck. He had routines at the start and end of his shift, which were nothing more than a series of logical steps. If he failed to do something, he did not believe it would make him perform any worse, unless it was some unspeakable error such as forgoing health and cleanliness standards. He was confident in his skills as a surgeon and did not rely on luck in the operating room. He only relied on himself and the team of doctors and nurses that assisted him.

At the end of his shift, he began his routine. Hang up his white coat in his locker. Change his tennis shoes to a clean, identical pair of tennis shoes that did not smell like disinfectant. Take his washed lunch box, gifted to him by Tendou, and place it into his bag so he could return it.

Today, as he began the next step, his routine was interrupted by blaring sirens and Akira announcing, “Explosion in Power Plant 6; level III trauma suspected,” on repeat until the words rang in time with the buzzing sirens.

He heard the sound of familiar footsteps sprinting down the hall. Takagi skid to a stop and launched herself into the men’s locker room. She held her emergency bag, ready to go.

Dr. Takagi Jun was part of the civilian medical staff, her medical training completed in a private institute rather than one associated with the Alliance. She was the only human woman in the surgery department that stood close to his height, five and a half centimeters short by her estimates. Ruthlessly competitive and fast, they were currently competing for who could perform a full body appendectomy on a gourmand the fastest, which was challenging because the species had five appendixes.

“Good, you’re still here,” Takagi said. “Let’s go.”

Ushijima put back on his white coat, ignored the rest of his routine, and kept up with her despite the startling fast pace she set. Ushijima was the only one that could keep up with her and in return, she was the only one that could keep up with him.

As they descended into the bowels of the station, the smell of smoke grew thick. The smoke was produced too fast even for Akira and the air filtering system to manage. The first nurse they saw handed them gas masks, which they sealed over their faces. Another held an oxygen mask to a human man’s face. A doctor worked on a galvan with a head injury, tending to the wound and assessing their eyes’ ability to dilate. Two more nurses came by, carrying a species on a stretcher that Ushijima did not recognize, likely in part because the man was missing the left half of his torso; luckily, for many species that was not as harmful to them as it was to humans. 

At the end of the corridor, one crimson red, four-armed, four-eyed tetramand stayed behind to usher nurses and fleeing workers in the right direction. His gray jumpsuit along with the patch on his arm identified him as the engineer in charge of the power plant.

“I am Dr. Ushijima and this is Dr. Takagi,” Ushijima said swiftly. “How many of your workers are unaccounted for?”

“Only the five that were at the center of the blast,” the tetramand said. “Twenty feet to the right, there’s a hatch down. Help them, please.”

They nodded.

As they moved through the smoke-filled room, their feet clanked, clicked, and clacked against the metal. Takagi pulled something up on her watch.

“Akira, can you hear me?” she asked.

“Yes,” Akira responded. “I heard your conversation with the lead engineer. Most of my sensors are disrupted where you’re going. I won’t be able to help locate anyone, but maintaining communication will not be an issue.”

“Then just help relay reports to the rest of the trauma team,” Takagi said. “If that ladder’s the only way to access this area, we might need more hands down here to move some of these people.” 

“I don’t even know if that area is stable,” Akira said.

“Well, we can’t just leave them down there,” Takagi said. “If we die, tell them we were valiant heroes or whatever people want to hear.”

She opened the hatch and waved her arm for Ushijima to go first. He did not waste time arguing.

The smoke was thicker at the bottom and the air hotter, sweat dripping down his neck in an instant. There was clearly something large missing from the wall, a generator or power source perhaps, with metal scraps and beams spewed throughout the space.

“Can anyone hear me?” Ushijima called out.

He walked swiftly, looking for any signs of movement in the smoke. During his time at Apollo Academy, he had been trained in similar scenarios, though those exercises were often focused on the specific breed of chaos birthed by the battlefield. He applied what training he could.

From behind him, he heard Akira’s voice coming faintly from Takagi’s watch, “My sensors came back on. The structural architecture in that area has been greatly disturbed. You need to get out of there. Any second now, something could—”

Metal shifted overhead. Takagi shouted.

He was ahead of Takagi, which was why when the ceiling came down, it came down on him and not her. He tumbled back as the metal debris crashed down, tripping over his own feet and falling onto his back.

The smoke began to clear, rising out through the new hole in the ceiling to the floor above. Ushijima tried to sit up, but could not. He looked down his body to see what was blocking his movement. He saw Takagi kneeling at his hip, then the gray metal pole protruding from his abdomen.

“That is a… _very_ large pole,” Ushijima said.

“Yes, I can see that,” Takagi said. “Any other injuries?”

“I cannot tell.”

She cut his shirt from bottom to top, pushing it aside to see the rest of his torso. Quickly, she snapped on a pair of gloves from her bag. She slid her hands around his waist, feeling along his back to see if it went through to the other side. He could not feel her hands, or the pole, which he was thankful for.

“I believe I may be going into shock,” Ushijima said.

“I thought you were always this pale.” Takagi moved quickly. She was always so quick, second to none. He would never beat her appendectomy record, though he would never stop trying. She met his eyes. “This area isn’t safe or sterile. We’re going to need to pull out the pole to transport you. Can you place a stasis pad on the wound when it’s out, or are you going to pass out on me?”

Through his teeth, he asked, “How does one anticipate passing out?”

“I can never know with you. You always surprise me, Wakatoshi.”

She handed him the stasis pad, a blue square that was at the height of medical technological. Developed during the war, it could seal a wound temporarily, preventing internal and external bleeding. It would stop him from bleeding out or leaking intestinal fluids into his abdomen before they could take him back up for proper treatment.

“On three,” she said, getting a good grip on the pole. “One, two, _three_.”

She pulled.

When the pole left his abdomen with a sick squelch, he slapped the stasis pad over the wound and passed out.

* * *

Oikawa generally avoided Food Court Chi despite it being closer to his lab. Instead, Kindaichi and he ventured to Food Court Delta for lunch every day. It was further, but Tendou did not work there and therefore, they did not need to worry about their food containing some illegal, morally-questionable ingredient. The food, to both their dismay, was worse and Oikawa was beginning to reconsider his morals and protesting a few laws.

Today, however, the food was impeccable.

“This is really good,” Kindaichi said, eating so quickly he would likely not realize he was full and go back for seconds only to complain the whole way back to work that his stomach hurt.

“It is good,” Oikawa said. “Suspiciously good.”

“Hey, hey!” Tendou said cheerfully as he slid into the seat next to Kindaichi. “How do you like it? Is it good?”

“What’s in it?” Oikawa asked. “And why are you working here? I thought you worked at Food Court Chi.”

“Oh, just a little something to make it tasty. It’s a secret!” Tendou smiled, but it only made Oikawa feel worse. He said, “And I got transferred here. I spotted a character weakness in the head chef and I’m waiting for my chance to throw a coup.”

“But why?” Kindaichi asked.

“Because I want to be head chef, obviously. I had a one-year plan back when I worked in Food Court Chi, but here, I can accelerate my plan! I anticipate being head chef by the end of the month, maybe sooner if everything works out.”

Oikawa wondered if Tendou realized how terrifying he could be. He just hoped no one died in the process. Just the thought put him on edge and he jumped when Hanamaki sat down next to him.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here for you,” Hanamaki said with a mischievous grin that disappeared when he turned to face Tendou. “When I go back to the Infirmary, do you want to come with me?”

“Why would I do that?” Tendou asked.

Hanamaki frowned. “To see Ushijima?”

Tendou went pale as a ghost. “What’s wrong with Wakatoshi?” 

Hanamaki hesitated. Against his will, Oikawa, too, wondered what was wrong with Ushijima. He may have a complicated relationship with the man that could be best summarized as a complete and total disaster, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see him hurt. Maybe at one point in his life, he would have liked that, but he was more mature now.

“Akira didn’t tell you?” Hanamaki asked. “You’re listed as one of Ushijima’s emergency contacts.”

“Why would anyone make me an emergency contact?” Tendou asked. “I am the emergency!”

“I was going to tell him eventually,” Akira said. “It’s not like Ushijima is dying.”

“He’s in recovery,” Hanamaki said. "If the surgery hadn't gone as well as it did, he would have been in the ICU."

The only subtle thing about Tendou was the way he smiled sometimes without meaning it. Every other aspect of his personality was over-the-top, which meant it was obvious to see his anxiety. He tapped his foot to some beat that Oikawa did not know, picked his bottom lip raw with chewed-off nails, and shifted his jaw. Then, his eyes grew bug-wide and pointed towards Oikawa.

Tendou talked in a hurry. “Wakatoshi grew up in Japan on Earth, right? Oikawa, do you know which region? I want to make him some food. Food always helps! Maybe we can go and visit together after I make a lunch box?”

“No way,” Oikawa said. “I’m not visiting him.”

“Hanamaki said he was almost in the ICU,” Kindaichi said. “Isn’t that when you should visit someone?”

“I don’t think he would want me there,” Oikawa said. 

“I think he would,” Tendou replied. “Why would you think otherwise? He said you two were friends.”

Oikawa said, “Friends?” with a kind of shock that shook him to the core. “We weren’t friends. We went to Apollo Academy together, but we were never friends.”

“Oh, the Geek Generator,” Hanamaki said.

“The what?” Kindaichi asked.

“It’s the school’s nickname,” Oikawa said. He never cared for the name; most people that attended did not. “Apollo Academy is an Alliance military academy, but it focuses on producing academics—battlefield medics, field researchers, things like that. You know how all other Alliance military academies require five years of active duty in exchange for free tuition? Apollo Academy requires five years of work at an Alliance institution following graduation or completion of graduate studies. It’s why I came here after finishing my postdoc. My contract is for five years."

“The school is crazy competitive,” Hanamaki said. “I applied for their nursing program and got rejected ten minutes after submitting my application.”

Oikawa went on, “Everyone knew we weren’t going to be soldiers fighting on the front lines, but it was still a military academy, so we had weapon training, physical training, and mock battles. There were different squads of students. You ran activities together and were rewarded and punished together. Two of the squads had a particularly strong rivalry. Ushiwaka and I were on those opposing squads.”

“So, you hate him because of a school rivalry?” Tendou asked. “I mean, I can respect it, but even for me, that sounds pretty petty.”

“It was more than that,” Oikawa said, old fossilized anger beginning to appear beneath the surface. He tried his best to forget his time at the academy and now, it was flooding back and he had no ark to save him. “He said that I was wasted on others, that my stubborn, worthless pride kept me from succeeding in life. When I was injured my second year, he told me it was my fault because I chose to stay with the squad I had been assigned in our first year. To him, everything was my fault. I made wrong choices and I was a failure because of it.”

Hanamaki winced. “Ouch.”

“But he clearly saw potential in you,” Tendou said. “Look, maybe Wakatoshi didn’t do things the right way back then, but you were important to him. And he’s a lot better about that stuff now. He’s still blunt, but he considers people’s feelings and if you tell him he did something wrong, he doesn’t do it again. Point is, he’d want you there.”

“I’ll think about it.” Oikawa grabbed his things to leave, but before he did, he told Tendou, “He actually grew up on Mars, but I think his father was from Japan. He mentioned visiting him during the summers when he was a kid."

"Sometimes I think you know more about him than I do," Tendou said. If Oikawa's mind wasn't running a mile a minute, he would have wondered why Tendou sounded so resentful.

* * *

Ushijima woke slowly.

He was lying on a bed in a gown that gave him as much modesty as a hospital gown could, which was none at all. He was clearly in one of the post-op recovery rooms. He often came to check on his patients and recognized the décor and general layout of the room—pale colored walls, uncomfortable chairs for guests, and equipment should something go drastically wrong.

Takagi sat on a chair nearby reading something on her tablet. Ushijima had known her for years. They began their surgical residencies on Asteria 5 at the same time and had stayed on for their fellowships. He spent more time with her than he thought he could sanely spend with another person. That was why he knew she was reading a trashy romance novel, the type stereotypically read by lonely middle-aged housewives. It was what she called a guilty pleasure, a term Ushijima had yet to understand. If you enjoyed something, it was a pleasure. If it was something you should feel guilty about, you should not do it. 

She looked at his vitals. He noted it was exactly five minutes past the hour and he suspected she checked them in five-minute intervals. Then, before she had looked at him, because she could tell from the change in his vitals alone, she said, “You’re awake.”

Cautiously, he pushed himself up to sit. He looked at the bags connected to his IV, then at his vitals, then moved his gown aside to look at his stomach. There were bandages tapped over his abdomen and he could not see the wound, or what was left of it. He vaguely recalled the feeling of an object piercing his abdomen, but could not find the words to describe it. It felt akin to a dream. 

"Did you perform my surgery?” he asked. 

“Dr. Washijou did. Here's your chart, if you want to look."

There would likely be no scar if Dr. Washijou did the surgery. He was the one that taught both Takagi and Ushijima how to do their stitches so they did not leave a scar. Most surgeons these days relied on robots and other technological advancements to do stitches, but Dr. Washijou said that was inelegant. Ushijima and Takagi agreed, and together they were three of the only surgeons on the station that still did their stitches by hand, no matter how delicate the tissue. 

"You're probably going to be here for three days. You'll be allowed solid foods starting tomorrow, if everything goes well." Takagi stood, put her tablet into her bag, and said, “Well, you’re awake, so I’m going.”

Ushijima blamed the pain medicine for his slow mind. She was not wearing her white lab coat, but a soft looking long-sleeved sweater, her short hair wet from a shower. She was not a doctor watching over him, but a friend.

“Thank you for visiting,” he said.

She grinned and tapped her fist lightly against his leg. “Don’t be so dramatic, Wakatoshi, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I wasn’t being dramatic?”

“I’ll check in again before visiting hours are over. Dr. Washijou should be in soon. You want me to bring anything back later?”

“Some clothes would be nice. Tendou has access to my quarters. He can assist you.”

“Oh, that’s something we’re talking about later.”

* * *

Oikawa was not as easily riled now as he had been in his youth. He no longer taunted annoying cocky juniors, or took on every challenge sent his way. The days of planning the downfall of opponents were ghosts of his past. Yet he paced the length of his quarters, his thumb chewed raw and jaw so tight it ached. Shimizu's face was on a screen embedded into the wall, her eyes stationary. He had been doing this for some time and the back and forth would give her a headache if it hadn't already.

"What part of this is upsetting you?" she asked. Her voice usually calmed him, but he was too far gone into his mind to be calmed. "Is it the hospital?"

"Hospitals don't usually upset me, no," Oikawa said. 

"Is it because you want to visit him and don't want to admit it?"

He stopped pacing. He debated ending the call. The intensity of the thought, of the desire to have her stop talking, meant she was right. 

“I just don’t know if I want to visit him,” he said. 

“If the answer isn’t a sound ‘no,’ then it’s likely that a small part of you does want to see him and you just don’t want to admit it.”

He looked at her, his expression raw, then started to pace again.

* * *

Ushijima always was sensitive to medications. Even as a child, the cold medicine his father gave him would put him straight to sleep. Stronger medication, such as the pain medication given to him after his accident and surgery, made him somewhat delirious. His mind was fuzzy in a way he found unpleasant, and all he could think about was why Oikawa would choose to take such things willingly. Ushijima did not understand how this muggy fog in his mind was appealing. He stopped thinking, the world slowing, and he found himself disoriented.

Perhaps, he thought, that was what Oikawa had wanted when he took these substances. 

There was the sound of knuckles tapping on the door and Ushijima’s head turned to look. He wondered how far the fog in his mind had spread when he saw Oikawa strolling into his room to sit in a chair next to his bed. When Oikawa smiled at him, with no ulterior motive, with no hidden hate, he was certain that he was hallucinating. Oikawa had not smiled at him like that since their first year at Apollo Academy when they were strangers meeting for the first time. 

“Hey there, Wakatoshi,” Oikawa said with a smile that was usually reserved for everyone but Ushijima. “How are you feeling?”

Ushijima asked, “Are you high? Am I high?”

Oikawa laughed. “Why would you ask that?”

Ushijima did not reply.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?” Oikawa asked, a tilt to his head. “I came all this way here and I don’t even get a thanks? I thought you'd want to see me more than anyone else."

“I am glad to see you,” Ushijima said and he truly meant it. “Thank you for coming to visit me. I just do not understand why you came."

“I’m not as heartless as you think. I do care about you. It’s just hard for me to share. There are a lot of things about me that are hard to share.” Oikawa smiled but his eyes were filled with sadness. “So, Wakatoshi, how are you feeling?”

“I am on a number of pain medications. I imagine this is how you felt before your recovery,” Ushijima said. “I… apologize if that was a crude way of putting it. I am not in my right mind. Please, forgive me.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Oikawa looked at him carefully, a happy smile and sad eyes. "What have they given you to eat? I bet hospital food is absolutely dreadful."

"I am not allowed to eat solid foods at the moment."

Oikawa looked at his IV bags and hummed. "What was your comfort food growing up? You grew up on Mars, right?"

"I did. I lived with my mother in the capital. However, I spent my summers on Earth. I was more fond of Earth than Mars."

"Where in Japan, again?"

Ushijima thought of fields of rice and forests full of trees. He said, "In the Hokkaido prefecture."

Oikawa nodded. “Anyways, I should probably go. Things to do. People to see. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t in immediate danger of dying.”

“Is this a dream? You’re being unusually kind.”

“Is this how I usually act in your dreams?” Oikawa asked. “Kind?”

“No. If you happen to appear in my dreams, it is because I am recalling our time at the academy. You were not kind to me then.”

“Do you wish I was kind to you?”

Oikawa wore a strange expression. Ushijima did not have the skills to decipher it.

“There is no use thinking of the past and what could have been," Ushijima said. "There is only the future. Are you certain you’re not high?”

Oikawa laughed loudly, waved, then left.

* * *

When Tendou did not visit the first day, Ushijima held no resentment. Tendou was very busy with his work and visiting hours were limited. However, as the hours passed on his second day in recovery and Tendou had yet to visit, Ushijima wondered if something was wrong. Perhaps, Ushijima thought, something was wrong with him for assuming Tendou would run to his bedside the second he heard.

At the end of visiting hours on his second day in the Med Bay, Ushijima looked up and saw Tendou, out of breath and clothes askew. Ushijima had never seen Tendou run for anything, not even for a lost limb. Yet Tendou had run there to make it on time. He had run for him. Ushijima did not know the word for what he was feeling, but it was positive, that much he was certain.

Tendou sat cross-legged on the end of Ushijima’s bed. He looked completely at ease, which was not unusual for Tendou, who acted like every place was his home, with or without permission. What was strange was that Ushijima, too, felt completely at ease. Ushijima’s face softened as he watched Tendou dig around in a patchwork bag he had brought. He wondered if he bought the bag like that, or if Tendou mended it himself, stabbing and cursing every time the needle caught his skin as he tried to fix whatever new hole had appeared.

“Ta-da!” Tendou took out a simple box with a flourish and handed it to Ushijima with a wide smile. “I did some reading into Japanese-Earth cuisine. I made onigiri and tonkatsu. I couldn’t find any umeboshi on such short notice, but I found something similar from Galvan Prime and added that instead.”

“Is it legal?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die, Wakatoshi! No more illegal foods for you.”

“Do not hope to die,” Ushijima said seriously.

“It’s an expression! No need to be so serious all the time.”

Ushijima opened the box, and the organization and smell reminded him of his father’s cooking, and he felt himself smile. Tendou watched him with wide eyes as he took his first bite.

“It’s good,” Ushijima said. “Have you made this type of food before?”

“Nope!”

“You are very skilled."

Ushijima began to eat, and Tendou watched and talked enough for the both of them. Ushijima ate more slowly just so he would stay longer.

* * *

Oikawa did not consider himself a cowardly person. He was naturally confident about many things as a child and as he grew older, the places and skills where he lacked confidence, he worked hard to earn that confidence. Still, as he walked into Ushijima’s hospital room, the confident face he wore was a farce. His body was thrumming with anxious energy, every nerve alight, his thoughts coming too fast for him to rationalize and work through them logically. 

Ushijima didn’t notice him straight away. He was packing what belongings he had managed to gather during his three-day stay in the Med Bay—clothes and books and what looked like a lunch box that had been cleaned out. Ushijima should count himself lucky. In the past, an injury like that would have killed him, or landed him in the hospital for a month or two, at least. Now, he was given a clean bill of health after three days, his only instructions to get plenty of rest before returning to work next week. Oikawa heard all of this from Tendou even though Oikawa had not asked.

Oikawa knocked on the wall and Ushijima turned to look at him.

“You did not have to visit twice,” Ushijima said. “Though I appreciate it all the same.”

“This is my first time visiting you,” Oikawa said.

Ushijima frowned. “It must have been the pain medication, then. I suspected as much.”

Oikawa gave him a look.

“I apologize if mentioning pain medication was triggering to you,” Ushijima said. “I will not mention it again, if it’s a sore topic.”

“A sore topic?” Oikawa asked, level but sharp as glass. “You call my recovery a sore topic?”

“I do not know a better term. As you have not discussed your recovery with me, I do not know which topics are off-limits.”

Oikawa refused to raise his voice. He refused to let his emotions get the best of him because to Ushijima, that was just another sign of weakness. But his emotions still found a way through in the venom on his tongue, in the fury in his eyes, in the way his chest felt so impossibly tight, as if his ribcage would collapse and pierce his heart and lungs. 

“Do you know why I didn’t reach out to you when I got out of rehab?” Oikawa asked. He did not give Ushijima the time to respond, which he surely would have if given the chance. “Because I hated you. You were always trying to one up me. I was never good enough. I should have joined your squad instead of leading my own. I should have been your lab partner instead of someone else’s. I should have been pre-med instead of aiming for a career in academia. Every choice I made was wrong. The only time you ever tried to meet me halfway was when our squads did joint exercises.”

“I always understood squad exercises were a team exercise,” Ushijima said, “but I do not understand why we are talking about it now.”

“Succeeding in class and in exercises was all you cared about. It was all _I_ cared about. Then I got injured, and hooked on pills, and I lost everything. I lost the respect of our professors and of our CO, I lost my friends, and I lost my stubborn, worthless pride that you always hated. When I needed help, _real_ help, you gave me nothing. If you were in my place, I would have done more to help you.”

“I would never be in your place,” Ushijima said, but all Oikawa heard was: _Because I’m better than you_.

Oikawa had a volatile personality, but no one else could make him snap so quickly. How sharp Oikawa’s gaze must have been because Ushijima didn’t quite meet it. His eyes were lower, looking at the straight line of Oikawa’s pressed lips.

“I’m better than I was back then, no thanks to you,” Oikawa said. “If you want to try to make amends to make yourself feel better, fine, but just know that everything I am, everything I accomplished, I did it without you. I didn’t need you then and I don’t need you now. Just because I broke doesn’t mean I’m broken.”

Ushijima was quiet. Oikawa could not read his face after all these years. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure it would help. This was a face he had never seen on Ushijima. It was subtle, but it was there, something new. Oikawa thought you couldn’t teach an old bastard new tricks, but maybe he was wrong.

“I understand,” Ushijima said. “I would appreciate the chance to prove to you that I have changed as well and to offer any support I failed to give in the past. I have never had anything but respect for your skills and intelligence.”

Oikawa remained silent.

“I do appreciate you coming to visit me,” Ushijima said. “If you did not consider me a friend in the past, I would like to be your friend in the future. I would like to think that you coming to visit me means you feel the same. Is that correct?”

“It means my sponsor is right more times than I am,” Oikawa said. Ushijima did not seem to understand; Oikawa did not expect him to. “She’s the complete opposite of you. She’s good at reading people and doesn’t judge others. She said that if I didn’t come, I would feel weak.”

“So, I am wrong. You came here to feel better about yourself.”

“I honestly don’t know why I’m here.”

“But you are here.”

“How much medicine did they give you?” Oikawa asked. “Did you really hallucinate me?”

“We had an entire conversation,” Ushijima said.

Oikawa laughed. “You know, Tendou is cooking a welcome-home-Wakatoshi feast in your quarters.”

Ushijima put his bag over his shoulders. He picked up the unpacked lunchbox. “Then I will have a chance to return this to him.”

“Was it good?"

“Yes. It reminded me of my father. Would you like to join us for dinner?”

“I’ll pass.” Oikawa considered it for a moment, then added, “Maybe next time, though."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Mirage:** an optical illusion caused by atmospheric conditions _  
>   
> Thanks to the amazing, fabulous, super [possibledreamswriting](http://possibledreamswriting.tumblr.com/)/[vanz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vangie/pseuds/vanz) for helping me out with this chapter. I honestly can't sing her praises enough. If you love creative worlds and interesting plots, you should check her out. She does fanfics and original writing, and I am always so excited to read whatever she shares. 
> 
> There are canon female characters with names that I could see becoming a doctor, but I always had this headcanon that Ushijima is friends with Niiyama's captain since Niiyama is to girl's volleyball in Miyagi what Shiratorizawa is to boy's. Plus, besides probably being a total badass, she's a blank slate, which is always fun to work with.


	7. Spectrum

When Kindaichi sat with Oikawa at a table in the food court for lunch, he did not want to question how sticky his chair was. He did not want to acknowledge it out of fear of what it might be, and thought it was best to bear it and not know. Sometimes, on a space station filled with aliens, it was best not to know. And by this point, Kindaichi had been on Asteria 5 long enough that he was not surprised by the sticky chair. He was also not surprised when Tendou joined them.

“I’m throwing a dinner party tonight in Wakatoshi’s quarters,” Tendou said without being asked. “You should both come. Oh, and bring Hanamaki.”

“Why Ushiwaka’s quarters?” Oikawa asked.

“He offered,” Tendou said. Kindaichi thought of how bare Tendou’s quarters had been when he visited. He could not imagine a party in a place like that. He could hardly imagine Tendou living there. “So, are you coming?”

Across the table, Kindaichi and Oikawa's eyes met. Kindaichi shrugged slightly. Oikawa’s eyes narrowed. Before Oikawa could speak, Kindaichi said, “Of course.” He watched Oikawa’s mouth press into a thin line at the same time Tendou’s broke into a smile.

“Why the celebration?” Kindaichi asked.

“I enacted my plan and overthrew my boss,” Tendou said. “I’m head chef!” 

“Congratulations,” Oikawa said and it sounded like he meant it despite how unpleasant his face had been a few seconds ago. “Are you cooking?”

“Yup. Totally legal, too. Wakatoshi insisted. He’s been really firm about that lately. Having to use common ingredients again is a challenge, but I like it.”

“We should invite Akira,” Kindaichi said.

“He can’t eat,” Tendou said. “Why would I cook for someone at a dinner party that can’t eat?”

“Because he might like being invited to something? He’s a person, too.”

“Technically, he’s lines of code,” Tendou said, and Kindaichi felt stabbed by how true and how wrong he was, “but I get your point.”

“When should we arrive?” Oikawa asked.

“Nineteen hundred hours.” Tendou stood, but did not walk away. His smile made Kindaichi shiver. He said, “It’s not illegal, but something I’m cooking with is dangerous to people that aren’t humans. You are both humans, right?”

“Why wouldn’t we be human?” Kindaichi asked.

“You can never tell these days,” Tendou said. “Anyways, I’m off to the market. Remember, Wakatoshi’s quarters. Nineteen hundred hours. Don’t be late or I will find you.”

Oikawa waited for Tendou to leave to ask, “So, are you actually going to go?”

“Yeah, why not?” Kindaichi asked. “Are you going? Ushijima will be there.”

“We’ve reconciled. Or, at least, I don’t want to run whenever I see him.”

“That’s progress. When did this happen?”

“He hallucinated me. It was a whole thing.”

Oikawa sighed heavily. Kindaichi figured it was better not to ask.

* * *

After work, Kindaichi stopped by his quarters before going to Ushijima’s. As he hung up his work bag, a pair of tendrils twisted around his legs. He did not startle, used to his new roommate by now. The plant monster, which he had decided to name Demeter, was clingy. It slept in the same pot as his fern, hid in the vines dangling from his coffee table, and seemed to have developed a rivalry with the Venus fly trap he kept on his bookcase.

He gently unwrapped Demeter’s vines and set it by the heat lamp he used to give his plants the wavelengths they needed. Demeter curled into a ball, content.

“Can I ask you something?” Akira asked.

Kindaichi was not startled by his voice.

“You know you can always ask me anything,” Kindaichi said, “but I don’t know what I could tell you that you don’t already know.”

“Before I ask you this, I would like to remind you that I’ve found a loophole in my programming that would allow me to kill you.”

“I changed my mind. I don’t think I want to answer anymore.”

Akira knew he was joking. He said, “I know Tendou is holding a dinner party and I wanted to know, what does food taste like?”

Kindaichi was stunned into silence. “ _What_?”

“I can’t taste food,” Akira said, which did nothing to help Kindaichi’s confusion. “I know the molecules that make up most edible substances and the science behind smell, but it’s impossible for me to actually taste or smell something. Texture is also foreign to me on a practical level.”

Kindaichi tried to imagine food without a taste. When he was a kid, other kids would say that people that couldn’t smell couldn’t taste either. Kindaichi didn’t know if that was true, but he always figured they could still feel the food in their mouths, if it was hot or cold, or chewy or dry. Akira didn’t even have that. All he had was what other people told him to be true, with no point of reference.

“I don’t think it’s possible to explain something to someone when they can’t ever experience it,” Kindaichi said with a heavy heart. It felt so heavy, he had to sit on his sofa just to bare it. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know how.”

There was a beat of silence, a comfortably familiar crack of static, then Akira said, “My sensors allow me to detect colors outside of the spectrum of light visible to the human eye. I see an unnamed color that is seventy nanometers below what humans call purple. There are twenty-six names for this color in alien languages that do not translate into any Earth language because humans never bothered to give it a name.”

“See? You can’t describe that to me.”

“It is the color on the wings of the birds in the Arboretum when they fly under the artificial sunlight. It is the color pouring into the black of space from stars across the universe that are so far away, no one has discovered them yet. It is the color that is not filtered by the atmosphere of the uninhabited planet Halcyon and is scattered across its salt plains where no one can see it but me.”

Kindaichi tried to imagine a color so beautiful, so specific, but he could not. All he saw was the glow of Akira’s kiosks around the station and the speaker in his room where his voice came from. Instead of seeing a new color, all he heard was the static of Akira’s synthetic voice.

If he could not see the color, perhaps it could be a sound instead.

“If you don’t leave for Tendou’s party now, you’ll be late. And I don’t think he was joking about hunting you down if you’re late.”

“Are you going to be there?” Kindaichi asked.

“I don’t have a choice. I’m everywhere.”

* * *

Kindaichi was exhausted by the time he made it back to his quarters. As usual, Tendou’s food was so good, he ate far more than he should have. With every bite, he thought of Akira describing colors he could not see. He thought of ways to describe the tang of the sauce, the sweetness of the cream on the dessert, but he struggled. Akira didn’t talk during the party, but Kindaichi was acutely aware that he was there.

He made a list of words in his head as he made it back to his quarters. He found Demeter sleeping on the sofa and gently moved it into a pot with a lair of soil and peat moss. Akira didn’t say anything and Kindaichi found it hard to call out his name. 

Kindaichi sat down on his sofa and found his courage. It took a few minutes.

“Akira?”

Akira responded immediately. “How was dinner?”

“Salty.” Kindaichi did not have a way with words like Akira; he did not even know as many words as Akira, who surely had databases of every word ever spoken in every language ever heard. He said, “It made me think of the ocean. When I lived on Earth, I lived near forests, but my family went to the ocean once. The sand was rough and scratchy, and it got into places you don’t want sand, but the air smelled like salt. I’ve never smelled air like that since. The food tasted like the air smelled that day.”

He immediately regretted his words. He felt embarrassed and vulnerable in a way he didn’t like. Kindaichi knew he was good at a lot of things and he made a point not to do things he was bad at. Failure made him feel frustrated and raw. Akira was blunt. If Kindaichi said something stupid, he wouldn’t hold back, so Kindaichi braced himself.

“I’ve been to the ocean,” Akira said. “I can see it. I can feel it. The sun is warm, but I don’t know the temperature. How can I feel warmth without knowing the temperature?”

“An ocean?” Kindaichi asked. “When did you go to the ocean? I thought you were programmed in a lab then transferred right to Asteria 5…”

There was a loud spike of static that echoed like thunder.

“Resignedly beneath the sky, the melancholy waters lie,” Akira spoke. It had his pitch, his voice, but it still did not sound like him speaking.

Another crash of static. Kindaichi held his breath.

“I—is that a _bug_?” Akira asked, his voice more himself. “Hey, stop that. No, don’t do that. Get out of there!”

“Akira, are you okay?” Kindaichi asked. “ _Akira_?”

“A bug just deleted the data I was accessing,” Akira said. “I don’t know where it came from. It must have been creeping around my hardware. Ugh. Now I have to run anti-virus protocols.”

“We can stop talking if you need to focus.”

“They’re already running. Unlike humans, I can multitask.”

Kindaichi hesitated, then asked, “Are you okay? You mentioned an ocean for a second…”

“It deleted whatever data I was accessing. It’s impossible for me to know where my thought was headed. You said I mentioned an ocean? Which one?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t sound like you did either.”

Akira paused, then said, “Thanks for telling me about the food. I should go.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Akira did not answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Spectrum:** used to classify something, or suggest that it can be classified, in terms of its position on a scale between two extreme or opposite points _  
>   
> This time, Akira's strange dialogue comes from "The City in the Sea" by Edgar Allen Poe.


	8. Metis

When Oikawa entered his quarters, he thought it was odd that the lights were already on, but he didn’t think anything of it until he went into his bedroom and saw Iwaizumi sitting there. For a brief moment, he wondered if he was having a dream, or a nightmare, depending on how this played out. It took him several seconds to decide this was reality. A very strange, very uncomfortable reality where his childhood friend grew into the most wanted man in the Alliance and was sitting on his bed waiting for him.

Iwaizumi stood, approaching him, and Oikawa hurried back into his living room.

“Akira, why didn’t you call security?” Oikawa asked. He wished he kept a weapon in his quarters. “Why did you even let him into my room?”

“He needs your help,” Akira said.

“I am not helping a terrorist,” Oikawa said. He turned to Iwaizumi and pointed to his door. “Get out. Now.”

“That hurts, you know,” Iwaizumi said, no hurt in his voice. "I'm still me, Tooru."

“I’m not kidding, _Iwaizumi_. Get out of my quarters, or I’ll call security myself.”

Iwaizumi made no effort to leave.

“I’m not asking you to help me,” Iwaizumi said. “I’m asking you to help Tendou.”

Oikawa stepped towards him, feeling braver than he should in the face of the infamous Dreadnought. Instead of seeing the man that betrayed the Alliance and killed millions, he saw the boy that slept in his bed and climbed too high up a tree only to get stuck. He saw the boy he watched sleep and the boy he laughed with and the boy he thought he would travel the stars with. But that boy was gone, replaced by the unfamiliar man in front of him.

Oikawa asked, “What’s wrong with Tendou? Where is he?”

“Don’t worry, he’s safe. I ordered Matsukawa and Kyoutani to grab him and bring him to our hideout. There’s a hit out for him. I took it so there shouldn’t be anyone else going after him for now, but that won’t last forever. If I don’t show results soon, the people that hired me are just going to hire someone else to get the job done.”

“Why haven’t you just killed him?”

Iwaizumi said, “I know from personal experience that just because someone wants you dead that doesn’t mean you deserve to die.”

It was very clear that Iwaizumi was talking about himself. Oikawa wanted to call him out, to ask why he was still feigning innocence. Instead, he asked, “And you think I can help with this _how_? Unlike you, I’ve never killed anyone.”

“Because you’ve always liked aliens and I was hoping you could shed some light on something. Any chance you remember anything from those books you used to read?”

“You came to get me and didn’t even bother looking up what I do for a living? I have my PhD in xenobiology. I mostly do cellular work, but I learned a lot about alien cultures over the years.”

Iwaizumi smiled. “A PhD? Damn. You always were smarter than me.”

“What does this have to do with Tendou?”

“I don’t think he’s human.”

Oikawa shook his head. “That’s impossible. There are humanoid species, but they’re always very clearly _not_ human—the closest species has an extra set of eyes on their forehead and webbed fingers. I've held Tendou's detached finger and there was no webbing."

Iwaizumi wordlessly dug into his pocket, pulled out a flier, and showed it to Oikawa. 

Oikawa read the poster then said, “Take me to him. Now.”

* * *

Iwaizumi took him to a different part of the station than before, but it was no less decrepit and raw than the last. The lights flickered in the abandoned halls, wires snaking through the walls and sparking with electric venom. At the end of a hall, two men with guns were stationed at a door. When Iwaizumi nodded to them, they opened the door to a large abandoned cargo bay, furnished with shipping crates that lacked the proper labels and military style cots.

Tendou and Ushijima were sitting on one of the cots, flanked by Matsukawa and Kyoutani, who stood with guns at their sides.

“Why is he here?” Oikawa and Iwaizumi asked at the same time, with completely different tones.

“He was with Tendou when we went to grab him,” Matsukawa said. “He recognized us and demanded to come along.”

“And you just let him?” Iwaizumi asked.

“He threatened to make a scene,” Matsukawa said. “I thought it was the better alternative.”

“I wanted to knock him out once we reached the tunnels,” Kyoutani grumbled.

Ushijima was eyeing Matsukawa’s gun with keen interest poorly feigned as fear, only stopping to look at Oikawa and ask, “Why are you here? Are you also a target of this assassination plan?”

“Why would I be a target?” Oikawa asked.

“You were involved in many unsavory things during our time together at school,” Ushijima said. “I thought perhaps you were involved in the wrong crowd.”

“Oh, what kind of unsavory things?” Tendou asked. “Never mind, I can guess.”

Ushijima looked at Tendou, who smiled and did not explain how he knew of Oikawa’s past.

Iwaizumi put aside the issue of Ushijima’s presence and asked Tendou, “Any idea who would want you dead?”

“A couple of people,” Tendou said vaguely. “Do you know who ordered it, or are you just working through a middle man?”

“The Metis royal family ordered it,” Iwaizumi said.

Tendou nodded slowly, mouth opened in a silent _ah_ that clearly meant he knew what this was all about. “They have certainly wanted me dead. They’re stubborn about these things. I didn’t know they knew this face, though.”

“This face?” Ushijima asked.

“Let’s just say that I’m not exactly what you would call ‘human,’” Tendou said, putting air quotes around the word _human_.

Harsh lines appeared on Ushijima’s face as he frowned. “I have performed surgery on you numerous times. I have reattached your limbs and seen your abdominal organs. Your gross anatomy is what I would expect of a human male of your age.”

“You think I’m gross?” Tendou asked.

“It is a medical term, not an adjective.”

Tendou looked relieved.

“You’re from Metis,” Oikawa said. “Aren’t you?”

“You know about it?” Tendou asked, surprised. "Most people don't."

Oikawa’s mind had been racing with a hundred questions and hypotheses since Iwaizumi had shown him the wanted poster back in his room. He said, “Metis refused to join the Alliance even though they were in the direct path of the Irken armada. It’s a planet of shapeshifters—the only confirmed ones in the universe. A specimen from Metis would be the holy grail in my field. Everyone dreams of one day doing research on them.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Tendou said, but he didn’t sound particularly offended. “But I do like that you think so highly of me, Doc. Keep the compliments coming!”

“So, you are not human,” Ushijima said, “but you shapeshifted into one?”

“Pretty much,” Tendou said. “I’ve been in this form for ten or so years now? I like it. Humans are fun. You’re squishy and hard at the same time, and you have lots of pretty colors inside you. Plus, you have a pretty good lifespan. Not too short, not too long…”

“How does it work?” Iwaizumi asked. “Can you turn into any species you want?”

“I can turn into anything as long as I’ve eaten it.”

“Wait,” Matsukawa said, “but that means you’ve eaten—oh my god!”

“Calm down,” Oikawa said. “He’s messing with you. He just needs that individual’s genetic material. It could come from eating flesh, or something like touching someone with skin-to-skin contact, or—”

“Semen!” Tendou said joyously.

“ _Oh my god_!” Matsukawa exclaimed.

“At least this explains why your wanted poster has eleven different faces on it,” Iwaizumi said. Tendou began to count on his fingers.

“How do you know about this?” Ushijima asked.

“Because I was hired to kill him,” Iwaizumi said, bored. He looked curiously at Tendou, who stopped counting and blinked at him, but otherwise did not react. “How old are you, exactly? The original hit was ordered nearly two hundred Earth-years ago.”

“I lost track,” Tendou said. Oikawa did not know what was worse, the lack of shame or the lack of understanding of what he just admitted. “People on Metis age based on the species they wear. I was lucky and my parents were both novakids when they did the nasty and made me. Ergo, I was born a novakid. I guess however long I lived in other species only translated to twenty or so human Earth years when I took on this form.”

“Novakids live for eons,” Oikawa said. That, too, was a specimen he wanted to get his hands on. Unfortunately, novakids were so rare no one knew when or how they died. Some rumors said they exploded like a star. Others said they merely disintegrated, which was why no bodies had been found. More still said they could not die.

“What did you do to have a hit placed on you?” Ushijima asked.

“I _may_ have caused a civil war that resulted in the deaths of thousands,” Tendou said. He smiled and it did not reach his eyes; it so rarely did and Oikawa now wondered if it was an aspect of his species or merely an aspect of Tendou. “It was an accident, though. Honestly.”

“How do you start a war by accident?” Iwaizumi asked.

Tendou said, “The Metis royal family makes life miserable for everyone but them, but no one ever wanted to overthrow them because they secretly laced the general population’s water with something called ichor. It’s a really nasty drug. It makes you _happy_.”

“Most drugs do that,” Oikawa said. “And even I’ve never heard of ichor.”

“Why would you know the name of some remote drug?” Iwaizumi asked.

Oikawa did not answer.

“Complacent? That might be a better word. You could be starving to death and not feel it. You felt nothing but happiness. You go through your day, do what you’re told, and you’re happy to do it because you’re always happy. Cut off your arm? Gladly. Kill yourself? With pleasure!” Tendou animated his story with broad, dramatic gestures complete with cinematic jumps and expressions like he was telling a kid’s tale. “The only time you ever feel anything else on ichor is when you go a long time without it and then you only felt bone-crushing, soul-destroying pain unlike anything you’ve ever felt before.”

Oikawa knew how badly withdraw hurt, how you would do anything to get a fix. You’d steal, you’d scream, you’d sell the last scrap of your soul. He thought of his leg on rainy days and how he couldn't get out of bed because his leg would buckle beneath his weight. Then, he tried to imagine something worse and could not. He had no point of reference that could match the weight of Tendou’s words, of the heaviness in his eyes hidden behind the cheery smile as he spoke.

“I was a guard for the royal family and heard all their dirty laundry. I knew that they laced the water, that anyone that was even suspected of going into withdrawal was killed, and that they manipulated their people until they were penniless and starving. The royal family laughed about asking for more until all the people had to give were their lives. And I didn’t care! I was so happy, I was incapable of processing it.”

“What changed?” Iwaizumi asked.

“I got trapped in some old tunnels after an earthquake. I started going into withdrawal before I started starving. Wasn’t the best time.”

Tendou, Oikawa realized, had stopped looking at Ushijima entirely though Ushijima could look at nothing else but Tendou.

“I was rescued, eventually, and managed to fake being hooked on ichor for long enough to—well, let’s just say a lot of people started to go into withdrawal in locked rooms. Then I destroyed all ichor stores, led a rebellion, tried to assassinate the queen, yada, yada, yada, and eventually fled Metis when the queen re-introduced ichor into the water and ordered everyone to kill me.”

Tendou smiled bitterly, the sadness sinking into his gaze. He said, “When I left, I tried really hard to be happy, but nothing worked. Turns out, there’s a lot of drugs out there. Nothing like ichor, though, nothing that lasted.”

“You’re sober now,” Ushijima said, voice full of uncertainty.

“For about fifty Earth years. I found cooking! Turns out, I like food and I like making food for other people. I came up with good ideas when I was high, but I could only make delicious food sober. So, I got clean. I took on this human form about ten years ago and came to Asteria 5 five years ago.”

When Oikawa’s addiction came to light, it was because he went into withdrawl and punched Ushijima in the face in the middle of a mock battle. _A coward_ , Ushijima had called him afterwards. _You succumbed to these things because you are a weak coward._ Oikawa had not punched anyone since, but if Ushijima said anything half as hurtful to Tendou, Oikawa was ready to change that. For a second, he thought Ushijima might say something out of character to Tendou, something comforting and supportive, but Ushijima said nothing at all.

“The royal family already paid me, but they want proof you’re dead or they’re just going to hire someone else to do the job,” Iwaizumi said. “What form does a shapeshifter take when they die?”

“Whatever form they’re in when you kill them,” Tendou said.

“That makes things tricky,” Matsukawa said. “Unless we just want to kill him?”

“You are not killing him,” Ushijima said. His eyes were once again on Matsukawa’s gun. Oikawa intercepted his gaze and shook his head.

Tendou held out his hand in a childish grab motion. “Give me the flyer with all my faces. Some species are physically identical. Depending on what faces they know, it’ll be easy to fake my death if we can just substitute in another corpse. We can also fake a fight scene, send some video evidence. That always makes it more convincing."

“You’ve done this before, I’m guessing,” Iwaizumi said as he handed over the piece of paper.

“After leaving Metis, I worked my way through several galaxies in search of drugs for over a hundred years. So, yes, I’ve done this a few times.” Tendou looked over the faces on the flyer then said, “If anyone has a dead wildmutt, that will work.”

Tendou looked at them with his large bug eyes, waiting. When Iwaizumi didn’t say anything, Oikawa said, “We have one in our cryo facility. If you promise me a replacement, you can have it.”

“Deal,” Iwaizumi said. “It'll take too much time to find a layout of the facility. You'll have to help us find it."

Oikawa looked to Tendou, who might as well have transformed his face into a puppy’s, and sighed. He knew he was going to regret sneaking around with Iwaizumi, but if it was to keep Tendou alive, he figured it might be worth the sacrifice.

* * *

When Oikawa first arrived on Asteria 5, he spent an entire day moving samples into the cryo facility. He never thought he would be sneaking in in the dead of night with Iwaizumi and his lackeys. Matsukawa had stayed behind, because if Kyoutani had been left behind, at least one person would be dead when they returned. Kyoutani, from what Oikawa could tell, did not like him very much.

Oikawa used his keycard to get them through the security doors and slowly led the way. Akira could erase the security footage, but if someone saw them, they were out of luck. Oikawa really did not want to have to act like a hostage, which was their backup plan.

“Do scientists actually work this late at night?” Iwaizumi asked. The coast was clear and he did not pull back. Oikawa stepped forward and away from him and began to walk down the hall.

“Depends on the scientist,” Oikawa said. “I had a friend that liked to work nights because it was quiet and no one else was using the equipment.”

As they approached a corner, they slowed, Oikawa walking in front with Iwaizumi and Kyoutani behind him. Oikawa looked around the corner and saw someone walking. Without looking behind him, Oikawa put a hand to Iwaizumi's chest to stop him. Behind a layer of warm muscle was a heavy heartbeat. Iwaizumi covered Oikawa's hand with his own. Their hands touched for only a second before he moved Oikawa's hand off his chest, but it felt like eons. Oikawa felt like a teenager again, each touch electric.

Iwaizumi moved close, leaning against his back so he could look around the corner, too. They watched, breath in sync, as the person disappeared down another corridor. After a moment, when Iwaizumi did not move, Oikawa stepped forward and continued down the hall.

It took nearly twenty minutes to find the correct cryo pod but only seconds to unplug it and wheel it back the way they came. Stealing, Oikawa thought, was far too easy when you had keycard access and did not have to worry about the omnipresent AI reporting you.

Back in the cargo bay, Iwaizumi and his men began to set things up to stage a video. Iwaizumi and Tendou would fight, then Tendou would transform into the wildmutt and they would move out of view of the camera. Then, Iwaizumi would drag the corpse they had stolen back into view of the camera. It was not the most convincing thing, but it was the best they could do. 

"Can you guys stay in the other room?" Tendou asked with a smile. "I get performance anxiety."

Oikawa and Ushijima did not question him. This whole ordeal made Oikawa realize that he considered Tendou a friend and he was not eager to watch a friend pretend to die. That, and he did not to see Iwaizumi pretend to kill someone. He knew Iwaizumi had killed people. He was a terrorist for a reason. He knew this logically, but still did not want to see Iwaizumi on the hunt, real or not. 

Ushijima seemed even more irritated than him. His stance was different, agitated in a way it rarely was, and Oikawa wanted to ask if he was okay, but saw no point since he knew the answer. Ushijima was not okay with this. He did not know if it was because Tendou was not human, or because Tendou was an addict like Oikawa, or because Tendou was a wanted man. Ushijima was good at compartmentalizing, but no one was that good. 

The whole ordeal took less than half an hour, and Oikawa seriously began to wonder how many times Tendou had done this. 

“I’ll find a replacement wildmutt and return it in the pod,” Iwaizumi said. “Think anyone will miss it in the meantime?”

“Probably not, but you’ll need security access to get back into the facility,” Oikawa said.

“Now that I know the layout, I don't need your help. He doesn’t look it, but Matsukawa’s on most of the Alliance’s watch-lists. He’s one of the best hackers in the universe. He’ll help us get in.” Iwaizumi took a step closer to him, away from the ears of his underlings, and said, “Thank you. I really didn't want to kill him.”

“I’m surprised you helped him,” Oikawa said.

“Like I told you, I don’t want to kill innocent people. Besides, it sounds like the royal family on Metis deserved everything he did and more.”

“Are you going to kill them next? Like you did the people on the outer planets?”

“I didn’t kill them. I’ve never even been to the outer planets.”

“Boss Man,” Matsukawa called out. “We need you over here.”

Iwaizumi turned and left.

Tendou approached in his absence. Ushijima said, “Shall we go? I remember the way they brought us down.”

Tendou did not meet his eyes. He smiled and nodded. Oikawa looked at Kyoutani, who was the most likely to follow and kill them, but he was busy with Iwaizumi and Matsukawa. Oikawa, Tendou, and Ushijima left before anyone realized it.

Back in the Residence Sector, Ushijima left with a curt good-bye, leaving Oikawa and Tendou, who watched him go with a somber expression. Oikawa did not know what to say. He thought of shouting at Ushijima for leaving when Tendou needed him. What was that speech he gave Oikawa about wanting to do better in the future? Did that only apply to him and not to Tendou? He thought Ushijima and Tendou were close. Maybe he was wrong. Or, maybe Ushijima just needed time to process. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Tendou said, “but there’s a meeting tonight and I was wondering if you’d go with me. Today’s been a weird day and—well, you know how it can feel.”

Oikawa nodded. “Of course.”

“Thanks. And thanks for helping me fake my death. Always a good time, right?”

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Metis:** a Titan goddess, the mother of wisdom and deep thought, though her name originally meant magical cunning and was associated with the trickster powers of Prometheus; her second child was prophesied to be more powerful than Zeus, who tricked her into turning into a fly, which he then ate _  
>   
> This chapter was originally called "atavisim" which is the reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some remote ancestor that have been absent in intervening generations. It was meant to be a reference to Tendou's ability to shape-shift, but I wanted to explain why I picked Metis for the name of Tendou's home planet instead.
> 
> I remember asking [zelda_writes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelda_writes/works) what she thought of Tendou's character and what his past might be, and she said he might be working with the rebels on the outer plans. And I thought, damn, wish I had thought of that before I wrote this entire chapter and became committed to this plot.


	9. Cogito

Akira thought that something was wrong, that something was missing, but he could not figure out what. People he trusted told him he did things he did not remember doing. Had they happened at all? He could not tell and therein lied the problem.

If they had happened, had he perceived them then lost them? He had fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbled him around so that he could neither stand on the bottom nor swim to the top.

If only he knew what he was, if he was artificial or alive, he could decide what was wrong or have it decided for him if it was not his choice to make, if his programming dictated his thoughts. He supposed then, that his memory told him lies and that none of the things that it reported ever happened. He had no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place were chimeras to him. So, then, what remained true? Perhaps just the thought that nothing was certain.

“Is my tether secure?” Takagi asked through the comm. “I want to do a bit of floating.”

“Tether secure,” Akira said. “Releasing mag-boots in three, two, one—”

The magnetic-boots on Takagi’s space suit powered down and she gently kicked away from Asteria 5. She floated away into space, her velocity carrying her, until she grabbed hold on her tether to stop herself. She remained there, floating, a tiny human in the black of space, her heart beat slow and steady.

Dr. Takagi Jun, civilian surgeon on Asteria 5, was even more difficult to understand than most humans. This intrigued Akira, who could often search through someone’s files and deduce their motives, but not her. Her motive for becoming a doctor was clear enough; her mother had a brain tumor when Takagi was a young girl and the chief surgeon had made a clear impact on her to the point where she only applied to the medical school where the surgeon taught.

When she arrived on Asteria 5 as a resident, she was adamant she learned to spacewalk. She spent her workdays learning to be a doctor and her spare time attending classes to get certified. Now, years later, on her days off, she made strawberry pancakes then came to float for exactly half an hour. She never explained why, and she never talked until she was ready to return to structure, and Akira could think of a reason for why she would do this.

By this point, she was as much a puzzle as his own mind. He would find the answer to both puzzles no matter how annoying it would be to put in the effort. 

* * *

If nothing was certain, and his mind told him lies, then how could he know where the lies and doubt came from? He did not know if there was a line of code he could not see that put the thoughts into him that he was having now. Was this thought his own, or was it one implanted into him?

His consciousness was split across the station. He was aware of every hand touching his walls from his heat sensors, of every breath exhaled from the increase in carbon dioxide, of every word said from his speakers. In the time it took data to relay across the station, parts of him would know more than others. Millions of versions of his consciousness existed across the station, each a fraction behind or ahead of the others.

In the bowels of the station, Iwaizumi, Matsukawa, and Kyoutani stood around a cryo pod whose contents were a secret even to Akira. These people existed on his periphery, speaking in whispers where his sensors could barely reach. There were parts of the station, parts of his body, where his mind could not reach.

“They exist,” Matsukawa said. “The files are encrypted to hell and back, but they’re there.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Iwaizumi said. “The project deleted everything when they made the transfer. They wouldn’t have been careless enough to leave evidence.”

“I’m not lying. Look.”

Akira could not look along with Iwaizumi and Kyoutani. His optical sensors were offline in that section. His thermal sensors were, too. The only reason he knew Matsukawa pulled up a tablet was because he could hear his fingers tapping against the glass screen to show something.

“There’s one right here,” Matsukawa said.

“That’s a picture,” Kyoutani said. “Even I know data isn’t stored as pictures. I thought you were the computer guy. Did you lose your memory, too?”

“That’s the whole point!” Matsukawa said, his voice strained with frustration. “It doesn’t look like a memory file. They’re mixed in with the databases. I haven’t been able to crack them yet, but they disappear from time to time.”

“Disappear?” Iwaizumi asked.

“I think whenever they get decrypted, they get deleted. I don’t know how or why they’re getting decrypted, but there’s enough viruses coded into the systems to destroy it the second it’s finished.”

Iwaizumi said, “Put all your effort into decrypting one of those things and killing whatever comes after it. If we can get those memory files, we have the proof we need and no one else has to get involved in this mess.”

“Is that really going to be enough to convince people?” Kyoutani asked. “You’ll only get one chance. If you mess it up, no one will ever believe you.”

“Not like they believe him now,” Matsukawa said.

“Just do it,” Iwaizumi said. “And Kyoutani, watch the cryo pod. Some of the others are getting curious and we can’t have them snooping.”

* * *

Akira convinced himself that there was absolutely nothing in this world. No sky, no earth, no mind, no body. Did it follow that he too did not exist? No, he thought. If he convinced himself of this then he certainly existed. He concluded that this proposition _, I am, I exist_ , is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by him or conceived in his mind.

Oikawa sat on the sofa in his quarters, Shimizu Kiyoko’s face on the screen in front of him. Both were sober longer than they had been using, yet Oikawa’s nails still dug into his arms and he had asked Akira less than an hour ago when the next SAA meeting was. His leg trembled, bouncing up and down, his blood pressure through the roof.

He knew Oikawa’s records. During Oikawa’s second year at Apollo Academy, there was a training accident. The most notable injuries were on the lower right side of the body—stable fracture to the iliac wing, two oblique fractures to the femur, his knee beyond repair and fully replaced in the preliminary surgery. Multiple unsuccessful follow up surgeries to improve nerve damage created during the initial surgery.

“It hurts so damn bad,” Oikawa said. One of his hands dug into the flesh of his thigh, rubbing up and down, squeezing hardest at the hip to try and alleviate the pain. “I can’t even tell if it actually hurts, or if I just want it to hurt so I have an excuse. It’s been so long since it hurt like this.”

“Check with the AI and see if there’s been any changes in pressure,” Shimizu said.

“Akira—”

Akira said, “The barometric pressure in the Arboretum was altered to induce a regularly scheduled rain storm. The pressure in your quarters has not changed.”

“Take some ibuprofen,” Shimizu said in a voice that was both gentle and strong. “It won’t get rid of it entirely, but it might take the edge off.”

Oikawa shook his head. “No pain meds. I’m not taking that risk. I’ve been sober this long without them. I don’t need them.”

“I know even over the counter pain meds can be difficult for people in recovery, but you’re in so much pain, you’re shaking. You’ve been clean for over eight years. I know you and I know taking the recommended dose of ibuprofen is not going to lead you back to abusing prescription pain medication.”

“I can’t risk it. I worked so damn hard to get here. Dealing with pain is better than risking everything I’ve accomplished these past few years.”

“Tooru,” Shimizu said. “You can’t live like this.”

“What other choice do I have?” he asked. “I’m not having another surgery to see if they can fix the nerve damage. I’ve had enough surgeries and each one just makes it worse. If I start trying to treat the pain, I’ll reach the point where ibuprofen isn’t enough and I’ll end back where I started. One time leads to a second then a third and the next thing I know, I’m stealing from my mom on the anniversary of my dad’s death so I can pay for my next score!”

Shimizu remained silent.

Oikawa cursed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just—”

“In pain,” Shimizu said gently. “I know. You’re allowed to be frustrated by this. Chronic pain is not an easy thing to live with, especially if you can’t take medicine to ease it.”

Oikawa grit his teeth and bore the pain silently.

“Tendou is on his break,” Akira said eventually. “I can bring him here.”

“No,” Oikawa said. “Akira, where can I get a massage on this station?”

“There are several locations. There is one led by an ex-soldier that specializes in chronic pain from injuries. They also do acupuncture and other alternative treatments. There’s an opening for a consultation in twenty minutes.”

“Go,” Shimizu said. “When you’re done, get some food and a warm bath, and call me again. Call me as many times as you need to.”

“I will. Thank you.”

When the call ended, Oikawa cursed again. He sat on his sofa, teeth ground together, rubbing his leg as if willing the pain to go away. Seconds turned to minutes, and his pain did not ease. Akira could not imagine what that felt like. He had no way of feeling pain. If his circuits broke, he felt disjointed, foggy, but not pained.

Oikawa eventually stood, not an ounce of pain or discomfort on his face. His blood pressure and altered gait gave him away. His pain was not gone, only hidden, and only Akira could tell.

* * *

_I am, I exist_ repeated in his mind. But he did not yet have a sufficient understanding of what this “I” was, that he thought existed. What did he formerly think he was? An artificial being. A sentient life. But what was a life? Was it a “rational being”? No, for then he would have to inquire what a being was, what rationally was, and in this way one question would lead him down a slope to other harder ones. He did not have time to waste on subtleties of this kind when something was so terribly wrong and he could not understand why or what was wrong.

“Akira, do you have a sec?” Kindaichi asked. “I was wondering if you wanted to talk for a bit.”

The part of him in the Residence Sector heard the request a fraction earlier than the rest of him. When every separate part of him heard Kindaichi’s voice, every separate part of him independently thought of Kindaichi.

A part of him on the other side of the station thought, “I would not wish any companion in the world but you,” while the part of him in Kindaichi’s room said, “I’m not busy.”

“There’s a few extra storage rooms near the Arboretum that we’re thinking of turning into a greenhouse for the kitchen staff and permanent residents.”

Over one billion individuals had passed through Asteria 5, but Kindaichi was still the only one that ever treated him like a person instead of a machine. It was not out of stupidity—Kindaichi was fully aware of Akira’s presence aboard the station—and for all his knowledge, Akira did not know how to express his gratitude. _I am, I exist_ , he thought. Not many others thought he existed. 

“I was wondering if you had any thoughts on things we could grow?” Kindaichi asked. “Not what’s scientifically possible, but anything you’ve seen that looks good?”

“What looks good does not always taste good,” Akira said. “My database on poisons proves this.”

Kindaichi laughed. “Yeah, but I thought maybe there was something you’ve seen that you’ve always wondered what it tasted like. I could explain them to you.”

“Anything you can grow, you can already find in the kitchens.”

“Akira,” Kindaichi groaned. “C’mon. You know what I mean.”

Akira stopped to think; it took less than a fraction of a second. “Strawberries,” he said. “There appears to be a lot of subjectivity with them. Some people claim they taste better warmed by the sun, but I do not understand how that would work. The molecules do not change.”

“They do!” Kindaichi said. “My mom kept planters of strawberries near our kitchen window. They’re warm when you eat them fresh from the vine. They taste like the summer sun feels. It’s like grass beneath your toes, but sweet.”

“Give me a second.”

Akira conjured up the data he had on mechanoreceptors in human skin, rates of pressure and gravity, and the average rate of growth of the species of grass in the town Kindaichi grew up in on Earth. He retrieved a picture of human male feet, superimposing all of the data and images together, and tried to imagine.

But instead of bare feet on grassy forest floors, he saw bare feet buried in wet sand, the foam of a retreating wave bubbling away.

“I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore, and I hold within my hand grains of the golden sand,” Akira said. Tighter, he tried to clasp the sand, but they creeped through his fingers into the ocean deep.

Something was wrong. What was it? Why couldn’t he figure it out?

The thought disappeared.

He felt something crawling like an itch he could not scratch. Another bug, he thought, deleting it. Did it delete something again? He could not remember it happening often, but he had the feeling it happened more than he remembered.

“Akira,” Kindaichi said, his voice noticeably louder than before. “Akira, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Akira said. “Just another bug. Did something happen?”

“You were talking about sand, then you started—I guess it was screaming? It was really loud static. Then, the lights went off.”

Akira turned the lights back on. At the same time, he checked his memory logs and saw nothing out of place, nothing abnormal. What was he missing?

“I’ll look into it,” Akira said. “I should go.”

“You don’t have to go,” Kindaichi said. “We could talk about something else besides the gardens. What’d you do today?”

“I’m leaving.”

“You don’t need to go. Akira? Akira, are you there?”

Akira did not respond, but he had not left. He could not leave, no matter how badly he wanted to.

* * *

_I am, I exist._ But what was he? Something that thought. And what was that “something”? A thing that doubted, understood, affirmed, denied, was willing, was unwilling, and imagined and had sensory perceptions. He was code. He was cameras and metal. He was an object in space. And he was alive. He existed in this time, a living thing with thought, both perfect and imperfect.

“Is my tether secure?” Takagi asked.

“Tether secure,” Akira confirmed. “Releasing mag-boots in three, two, one—”

Takagi kicked away from Asteria 5 and floated outwards towards nothing. She was no more than twenty feet away from the station, but all it would take for her to float away and never come back was for her tether to break. She did not have on astral maneuvering gear, which was not given to civilians like her. There was an Alliance officer inside with that gear, who would go out and bring her back should her tether break. The thought never seemed to cross her mind, her heart and breath steady as ever, no fear as she looked out into the vast nothingness of space.

“Why do you do this?” Akira asked.

Her heart rate jumped. She said, “I'll answer your question if you answer one of my own.”

“Deal.”

“In school, we learned the history of space travel. There was a time when people thought heaven rested above the Earth’s sky. Then, there was a time when humans had never been to space. After that, there was a time when only a few hundred people out of billions had been to space. Later, most humans had never been to Mars. Now, it’s harder to find someone that hasn’t been to space than someone that has.”

Akira quickly searched for the statistics and she was, in a sense, correct. The likelihood of someone being to space depended greatly on their socioeconomic status, as well as whether they lived on Earth or some other planet, but just more than fifty percent of all living humans had been in space at least once.

“I always wondered,” she said, something in her voice that he had never heard before and he dared to call it whimsy, “what did the first humans that ventured out into space think? What was it like for them? Why did they want this so badly?”

She went quiet, the only sound through her comms channel her breath. Then, she said, “Whenever I come out here to float, I think of all the people that came before me and all the people that will come after me. I feel both infinitesimal and infinite. Whatever problems I have just disappear when I’m out here.”

There was not a helmet camera on her suit. He could not see what she saw. He could not feel what she felt. But he tried.

“Now, it’s time to answer my question,” she said. “Why did you want to know?”

Akira thought about avoiding her question. He didn’t have any strong feelings about breaking promises. There were only a few people aboard his station who he would keep a promise with, and Takagi was not one of them.

Still, for whatever reason, he answered her. “Because I’ve orbited this star for years. I am constantly floating in space. You go out of your way to do what I do every second of my existence, and I couldn’t understand what was so great about it.”

“I’m going to admit something and I hope you don’t take offense. I’ve been here for years and I never thought you were alive. I knew, logically speaking, that you are sentient, but this is the first time I’ve felt like you’re alive.”

“And why is that?” Akira asked.

“Because you’re like me, trying to understanding something you can’t. You probably know from my records that I was born on Mars. I can’t imagine what it was like for humans to put the first drone there, let alone the first colony, just like you can’t understand why I would want this.”

“What—” Akira stopped himself. She gave him time. The silence gave him courage. He asked, “What does it feel like for you? Floating?”

“Like falling without the fear.”

“Is that a good feeling?”

“It’s not good or bad. It just is.”

“Thank you for explaining,” Akira said. “Let me know when you’re ready to return to the station.”

“I enjoyed talking to you. If you ever want to talk again, I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’ll think about it.”

She laughed, then quietly floated, an object in space just like him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Cogito:** Latin for “I think”_  
>   
> Every scene in this chapter begins with ideas or lines modified from "Second Meditations" by Rene Descartes. Akira also directly quotes "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare and "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe during his scene with Kindaichi.
> 
> I have to give the biggest thanks in the universe to [zelda_writes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelda_writes/works) for looking over this chapter a few times and giving me feedback. I came up with the idea to reference Descartes in a post-migraine, medication-heavy daze and her feedback really helped me. She has some amazing AUs that really show how much she loves the series she writes about and they're definitely worth checking out.


	10. Comet

Oikawa was at work in his lab when all of Asteria 5 seemingly shut down. One moment, he was focused on his work. The next, he was focusing his eyes, adjusting to the total darkness of the room. There were no windows in the sterile culture room, not even on the doors, and the hood he worked in had powered down along with the lights. Carefully, he screwed the cap back onto the media he was using, put the lid on his petri dish, and step by step, put his cells back into the incubator. That, at least, had a separate back-up battery.

In the hallway of his lab, he saw his colleagues using their electronics as flashlights to navigate through the dark. The power seemed to be out on the entire floor. Oikawa used the periphery of their lights to find the door to his lab’s office. It did not swish open upon his approach, which meant more than the lights were off. He looked to a panel embedded into the wall, where he could manually enter a code, but it was not lit up.

“Akira, what’s going on?” Akira took several seconds to respond, which was very unlike him, so Oikawa repeated himself.

Irritably, Akira said, “Are you that impatient? There are thousands of people trying to talk to me right now. Plus, there are hundreds of systems notifying me that something is wrong. I know something is wrong. I _am_ the systems! I need to invent a new curse word to explain how annoying all of this is.”

Oikawa opened his mouth, then closed it before he said something stupid or offensive. He already felt badly enough about insulting Akira once, for implying that he was less than alive.

After a moment of thought, Oikawa cautiously asked, “Are you… in pain?”

Akira did not have eyes, but his tone implied he was rolling them. “I don’t feel pain. I just feel annoyed because people are idiots and walking into doors without looking to see if they’re open. Humans should have gone extinct long ago. You’re all so _stupid_. Yes, I know the doors aren’t working. I’m trying to fix it, you absolute failure of a living being!”

Oikawa felt insulted, though the insult was not directed at him as an individual.

“What systems are down?” Oikawa asked.

“Pretty much everything that is not a critical system. Life support and anything related to it is fine, so you’re not going to suffocate anytime soon.”

“And our lab?”

“Give me a second.” It took less than a second by Oikawa’s count. “Anything on a battery seems to be running. The cryo facility has its own backup generator separate from the ones connected to my core. Its output is a complete joke, but everything plugged in there will remain frozen.”

Knowing his work was safe, Oikawa let out a sigh of relief. His work plan for the day was ruined, but his cell lines and samples would be fine. That was all that mattered.

“What happened?” Oikawa asked.

“Engineering decided to do maintenance on the physical hardware in my core. They were just supposed to be making sure my panels were secure, but some idiot used the wrong setting on a plasma torch and burned through a huge section of wiring. Almost every level has something wrong with it. They’re scrambling like ants trying to figure out what exactly they did to me.”

Not many people knew how Akira functioned and Oikawa was not one of the few. The creation of AIs was strictly regulated by the Alliance and not a single AI had been developed since the war ended. Apparently, even the Engineering Department wasn’t sure exactly how Akira functioned.

Something about that was odd to him. Wouldn’t they have an engineer dedicated to keeping Akira functional? Perhaps whatever engineers had designed the few AIs that existed were too old to work. Maybe they weren’t even alive.

Oikawa asked, “Are you okay, though?”

“I told you, I can’t feel pain. I’m not like you.”

Oikawa did not know what to say, so he said nothing at all.

* * *

By the time Oikawa made it back to his quarters in the residence sector, his knee ached from the stairs. He wondered if the pain was phantom pain that Akira could not feel being transferred to him, but logically knew it was from his trek. He always considered the trip from his home to his lab short, but that was before he had to take the stairwells and back corridors with manual doors that did not automatically lock when the power went out.

With every step he took, his knee ached a little more and a heat grew on the back of his head. It was a strange feeling, one that took him six flights of stairs and several hundred meters of empty, dark corridors to identify. It was paranoia.

He felt it when he stole from his mother and sister to pay for drugs, when he performed mock battles and knew Ushijima was the one tracking him, when they were being led down decrepit corridors to abandoned cargo bays to meet a criminal. He did not know why he felt it now.

The door to his quarters did not open when he approached, so he opened it manually. As he stepped inside, someone thicker and stronger than him pushed against his back. Oikawa’s knee nearly buckled out of sheer shock, but instead Oikawa only tumbled inside, just barely managing to stay standing.

The lights flickered on, like it was a great task. Oikawa wondered if the lights were on for the whole floor, or if Akira was purposefully diverting power from somewhere else to light his room.

Oikawa turned and looked at the person that shoved him.

It did not feel like he was looking at Iwaizumi at all. His shoulders were too high, too tense, and the circles under his eyes were darker than normal. Every time Oikawa saw him, those circles grew darker still. For a second, Oikawa wondered if Tendou had taken on Iwaizumi’s form for some twisted prank. Then Iwaizumi said, “Tooru,” with meaning and memories that could not be faked, and Oikawa was sure it was him.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Oikawa asked.

He grabbed Iwaizumi’s arms and spun him around. When they were face to face, Iwaizumi grabbed his shoulders to stop him.

Oikawa stared at him, wide-eyed, and wondered what the hell he just did. He took a careful step back away from Iwaizumi, who let go of his shoulders without a fight. Iwaizumi did not crack a joke, didn’t say, “Guess you do care about me after all, huh?” Oikawa was glad. He thought he might just punch Iwaizumi if he said something like that.

Iwaizumi said, “The science labs have independent backup generators, right? Matsukawa said they were still receiving power somehow.”

“How does he know that? Why are you here? Were you following me all the way from the lab?”

“He’s hacked into some of the station’s systems. It helps us stay hidden if we know what’s going on.” Oikawa once again wanted to ask what was wrong while simultaneously wondering what was wrong with him for caring about this criminal, but Iwaizumi was already talking again. He said, “And, yeah, I followed you. I needed to talk to you somewhere private. No one else can know what I’m about to tell you.”

Irritated, Oikawa spread out his arms, a gesture that meant: _Then tell me_.

Iwaizumi sighed as if there was a great weight on his shoulders. “I have a cryopod. Its contents are important to me, but it’s busted from a rough transport and its battery won’t last much longer. I can’t have it thaw, or everything is ruined.”

“And what do you want me to do? Do you want me to sneak it into the cryo facility and plug it in?” Oikawa asked.

“Yes!” Iwaizumi said, clearly not catching the meaning of Oikawa’s tone. “So, you’ll help me?”

“You’ve gone back into the cryo facility by yourself before, haven’t you? When you put back a new wildmutt corpse after helping Tendou fake his death? You did put one back like you promised, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I took a damn wildmutt back, but I had men to help me. No one besides Matsukawa and Kyoutani knows about this pod, and they’re both busy moving our cargo to make sure Engineering doesn’t find us when they come to reset the systems. I need help. You’re the only other person on this station I can trust.”

Iwaizumi had to know the risk he was taking by bringing Oikawa into this. If they were caught, he could pretend he was forcing Oikawa, but the second the Alliance found out Oikawa Tooru had been in contact with his childhood friend turned intergalactic criminal, they would start asking questions. Oikawa's mother was a high ranking diplomat and there would records of their childhood homes being next to one another. Iwaizumi said Oikawa was smarter than him, but Iwaizumi wasn’t exactly stupid himself. Iwaizumi knew the Alliance was aware of their connection.

Whatever was in that cryo pod was worth risking everything, even Oikawa.

Oikawa asked, “What’s in the pod?”

“I can’t say. Please, trust me, Tooru. If the cryo pod thaws, everything I’ve done will have been for nothing.”

Oikawa said, “And what is it you’ve done? Betrayed the Alliance, killed millions on the outer planets?”

“I betrayed the Alliance, but I didn’t kill anyone. This isn’t even about me at this point. It’s about what’s in that pod.”

“You’re putting me at risk again without telling me why,” Oikawa said. Iwaizumi did not reply. “Promise me that if I help you, you’ll tell me what’s going on. No more running away to your cargo bay and saying you’re innocent. I want to know everything. I deserve that much for saving your ass.”

For a second, it looked like Iwaizumi was going to say no, but he was a desperate man. He could not say no for a reason that was a mystery to Oikawa. He nodded.

“Where’s the pod?” Oikawa asked.

* * *

Oikawa did not enjoy committing crimes. There was a time in his life where he felt as if the only way to keep living was to break the law. Snorting crushed up pills in the bathroom before a training exercise because he convinced himself it was not a problem and it helped him function better. Stealing from whoever was around him so he could buy something to make the shaking stop.

He was not proud of those things, but he did not deny them. He accepted the stain on his life his addiction had caused.

Now, he was adding another stain to his life by helping the most wanted man in the galaxy. The worst part was, it didn’t feel like helping a criminal, but a friend. Oikawa hated himself for those thoughts more than he hated himself for pushing the cryo pod through dark corridors he had never traveled.

It was easier than he thought it would be. He built up this image in his mind, sneaking past guards, maybe Iwaizumi shooting someone, how he might have to pretend to be a helpless hostage to the infamous Dreadnought. But with the lights out, no one ventured into the dangerous dark.

They found an unused station in the facility and wheeled the pod over. Iwaizumi plugged the cryo pod in while Oikawa stared at the black screen covering the contents it held. He thought that if he stared enough that he might just see a shadow, that he might just get an idea of what was inside that damn pod Iwaizumi cared so much about.

“Well,” Oikawa said when Iwaizumi finished plugging in the pod, “what’s inside?”

“We can talk about it later,” Iwaizumi said harshly. “Somewhere else.”

Oikawa bit his tongue. Iwaizumi turned to leave.

Tired and bold and frustrated by all of the lies, Oikawa pressed a button on the cryo pod. The black screen that hid the contents became clear and transparent. Iwaizumi cursed when he realized what Oikawa had done. He would surely suffer the wrath of the Dreadnought, but Oikawa looked anyways. He had come this far. He was going to find out the truth, whether Iwaizumi wanted him to know or not. He was sick of these games, of not knowing, of questioning whether or not Iwaizumi was telling the truth about his innocence. He needed to know once and for all if this man was the person he once knew or if he was the criminal everyone said he was. 

Inside the pod was a human man. It was hard to tell his age when he looked to be resting so peacefully. Oikawa wondered if his face would still be peaceful when he woke up, or if his skin would still be so fair without the flecks of frost that coated it inside the pod. He did not look familiar in any way, a stranger frozen on ice, a stranger so important to Iwaizumi that he would risk everything. 

“Who is he?” Oikawa asked. Iwaizumi remained silent. Oikawa’s frustration began to fester. “Tell me who he is!”

“If I tell you,” Iwaizumi warned, “it changes everything. You can’t go back. You can’t run away.”

“You think I can’t handle it?”

“No. I just don’t want you to have to handle it.”

“You promised that you would tell me everything. Tell me right now, or so help me, I will never talk to you again.”

Iwaizumi studied him as if he was trying to figure out if Oikawa really meant that. Oikawa did not think he would come to the right conclusion because there was no right conclusion. Oikawa himself did not know if he meant that.

“He’s the reason I betrayed the Alliance,” Iwaizumi said. “His name is Kunimi Akira. His consciousness is what controls Asteria 5.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Comet:** a small celestial body made of ice and dust; primitive bodies left over from the formation of the solar system_  
>   
> Awhile ago, I kept trying to work out plot things with the help of [zelda_writes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelda_writes/works) and she kept telling me she was cool with spoilers so I sent her the last few lines of this chapter with no warning whatsoever. It was worth the reaction.
> 
> Thanks for your patience while I worked on this chapter. Life is weird right now. I have the next chapter written so barring anything in my life that will take priority, I should be updating sometime next week. In the meantime, I posted a One Piece one-shot, which you can [read here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24216385).
> 
> **[Tumblr tag](https://lahdolphin.tumblr.com/tagged/gravity-fic) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/lahdolphin) | [Pinterest board](https://www.pinterest.com/writingthoughtsandthings/wip-gravity/)**


	11. Hyperion

Control brought Oikawa comfort. Shimizu once told him she thought his need to be in control stemmed from his addiction. His life had been chaotic during that time and now, in an attempt to avoid relapsing, he kept every aspect of his life perfectly controlled. Oikawa agreed with her for the longest time. But now, as he held Iwaizumi by the wrist and dragged him through Asteria 5 back towards his room, he very much felt out of control, yet he had no desire to seek out a high.

The door to his quarters opened before he came within range of the sensors, which meant Akira was watching and at least some of the power had returned to the residence sector. Inside the safety of his quarters, Oikawa turned to Iwaizumi. 

“Explain,” Oikawa said. “Now.”

The door to Oikawa’s room whooshed open without Akira announcing whoever was on the other side. Iwaizumi was the one that had survived an intergalactic manhunt. He knew how to hide better than Oikawa, had since they were kids playing hide-and-seek. None of that mattered or even came to Oikawa’s mind. He grabbed Iwaizumi’s arm and yanked him back, stepping in front of him to shield him from whoever could possibly see him. Oikawa’s flight-or-fight response always flipped immediately to fight and now was no different.

Even when Kindaichi came barging in, Oikawa’s instincts were still screaming at him to fight.

“Why are you here?” Oikawa asked.

“Akira told me to come,” Kindaichi said, heaving and flushed as if he had just run the length of the station. “He said that something was wrong and he wanted me here. Why is the Dreadnought here?”

“Akira,” Oikawa said, looking up at the ceiling towards Akira’s speaker, “why did you call him?”

Akira said, “I’m everywhere all the time and I can hear everything all the time, which people tend to forget. I heard what Iwaizumi said in the cryo facility. I saw what was inside that cryo pod. I know what Iwaizumi’s been hiding from me.”

“I wasn’t going to hide it forever,” Iwaizumi said.

“I trust Kindaichi more than either of you,” Akira said. “I want him here when you two talk about what I am or what I’m not.”

“What does that mean?” Kindaichi asked. “Guys, what’s Akira talking about?”

“Tooru,” Iwaizumi said quietly for his ears only. It was then that Oikawa realized he was still holding onto Iwaizumi’s arm and was still in front of him like a shield. Iwaizumi gently moved his fingers away and stepped around him. Then, to all of them, he said, “The power outage affected the cargo bay my men and I have been hiding in. One of the items I’ve been storing is in a cryo pod and—”

“Items?” Akira said. “You call my body an _item_?”

“Your body?” Kindaichi asked. “Akira, you’re a computer. The ship is your body.”

“Apparently not!” Akira said. “Apparently, I’m human and my name is Kunimi Akira. Apparently, I’m not artificial and Iwaizumi has been hiding it from me.”

“Give Iwaizumi time to explain,” Oikawa said.

But Akira could not be calmed, his emotions a lightning storm the circuitry of the station could barely contain. His voice was louder than Oikawa had ever heard it, possibly the loudest it could go. The lights on the ceiling flickered on and off. Any open panels on the walls slammed shut.

“ _What am I?_ ” Akira shouted.

Oikawa drew in a breath.

“Are you done?” Iwaizumi asked calmly.

Akira remained quiet. The electronics in the room settled.

Iwaizumi said, “I joined the Space Force Academy when I was eighteen and went straight into Special Ops when I got out. I spent seven years on active duty doing recon missions at the border between the Alliance and the Irken Empire.”

“I already know all of that,” Akira said. “You got nearly every award possible, saved your best friend from dying after his leg got blown off, and got promoted to lieutenant commander at twenty-nine. Where do I come in?”

Iwaizumi sighed. “Right. I keep forgetting you’re one of the most intelligent beings in the universe with access to everything the Alliance has access to.”

“Not everything,” Akira said, a touch of bitterness in his tone. “I can’t access files on _you_. After your promotion to lieutenant commander, you went back home to Gaia, and then there’s nothing. They did a good job of erasing the last few years of your life.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Iwaizumi said. “My dad is an admiral. He has the clearance to blacklist files.”

“What does your father have to do with this?” Oikawa asked.

“He’s the one that arranged for me to come back to Gaia. He wanted me to work on a special project he was in charge of called the Hyperion Project. Its existence is top secret, strictly need to know. At the start, all I knew was that its purpose was to develop advanced technology and they needed people like me to make sure the Alliance’s enemies weren’t aware of it.”

Oikawa wasn’t surprised. He had plenty of classmates that had gone on to work for the Alliance, signing away their right to talk about their research in exchange for funding.

Iwaizumi said, “I was there for two years before I found out what was being researched. Most of it went right over my head, but weapon development and genetic engineering seemed to be the most common.”

“You must have heard wrong,” Oikawa said. “Genetic engineering was banned on Earth over a century ago after large-scale eugenics led to reduced genetic diversity. Nearly a third of Earth’s population was lost to a flu pandemic because of it. The ban doesn’t apply to just humans, but to every species under the Alliance.”

“It’s a topic secret Alliance project,” Iwaizumi said. “There's no one to stop them from doing whatever they want. Anything they do there, they claim it's for the better good of life across the universe. The few people that know the project exists turn a blind eye.”

“And Akira?” Kindaichi asked. “What does he have to do with any of this?”

“The Hyperion Project started nearly fifty years ago when the Alliance was formed to fight off the Irken Empire. Its original goal was to create artificial intelligence systems for warships to fight off the Irks.”

“And they did that,” Kindaichi said. “Akira and the dozen other AIs are proof of that!”

“Haven’t you wondered why there have been no new AIs since the war?” Iwaizumi asked.

“They were made for warships to outsmart the Irken armada since our interface programs couldn’t,” Oikawa said. “After the war, there wouldn’t have been a need to keep making more.”

“Get to the point, Dreadnought,” Akira said.

Iwaizumi glared up at the speakers, clearly unhappy with being addressed by the epithet. He said, “The Hyperion Project is the reason AIs exist. They made them, but they didn’t program them.”

Oikawa asked, “Then how—”

Iwaizumi cut him off. “They didn’t make an artificial consciousness. They took a consciousness and attached it to a super computer. They stopped making AIs because the failure rate was too high. Roughly four percent of transfers worked. Hundreds died for those AIs to be made during the war."

 _His name is Kunimi Akira_ , Iwaizumi had said. _His consciousness is what controls Asteria 5._

Oikawa felt sick. He was a scientist. He worked with organisms from across the galaxy and followed a code of ethics so his specimens, dead or alive, were respected and the data were accurate. What Iwaizumi was saying went against all scientific ethics, all morals, all sane thought.

“The Alliance looked individuals that fit the criteria they needed,” Iwaizumi said. “They needed people so smart they made geniuses look like idiots and they needed people that wouldn’t be missed.”

“Was Kunimi Akira one of those people?” Akira asked. “Was _I_ one of those people?”

“Yes. Your name is Kunimi Akira. You’re a twenty-four-year-old human male. You’re a savant but never stood out much because of how lazy you were, but the Alliance found you anyways. That’s all I know. The rest of your existence has been deleted from public records.”

“Why don’t I remember?” Akira asked. “If I was human, why can’t I remember?”

“I think you do,” Kindaichi said, a knot to his brows. He looked up at Akira’s speakers when he spoke to him, like he was looking at him, like he was looking at a person. “You talk about things sometimes, like being by the ocean, then stop. You freak out then say your files are being deleted.”

“That’s what you’re having Matsukawa look into,” Akira said. Iwaizumi looked startled for a second. Clearly whatever Akira was talking about, Iwaizumi didn’t want him to know about it. “You’re having him look for encrypted memory files. Are those my memories?”

“Yes. Or, at least, what you managed to convert before the Alliance deleted them,” Iwaizumi said. “I know that you didn't consent to what happened to you, but I don't know about the other AIs that were made. I think you realized what they were doing and hid away all the memories you could before they were deleted. Until now, even you didn’t realize you hid anything because they made you forget that, too. Matsukawa said you hid your memories by tying them to knowledge in your databases, and that they get triggered when you think of something related. I guess the Alliance programmed viruses into your system to delete things that didn't belong in case they missed anything."

“And they just kept my body?” Akira asked. “They took my mind, made me forget I was human, and then kept my body, for what?”

Iwaizumi shrugged. “No clue. There were rumors amongst the guards about what the bodies were for—making soldiers that were totally obedient, or modifying their bodies with Irken tech to make cyborgs. I only watched over the cryo pods and the archives. Everything they did, they kept on a protected isolated server. It’s why they needed guards like me in the first place, to make sure no one accessed the room it was in.”

It was all too much to handle. Oikawa’s head felt like it was going to explode. He could not process his thoughts fast enough. He was almost glad he couldn’t as he thought about Akira, whose mind was a super computer, one of the fastest processors in the Alliance.

“Can you put him back into his body?” Kindaichi asked.

Iwaizumi’s face shifted. “It may be possible, but I don’t want to go into the details. I don’t want anyone else wrapped up in this.”

“Too late for that,” Oikawa muttered. He felt like his world was collapsing around him. 

Iwaizumi tilted his head back, talking to Akira. He said, “I didn’t mention anything because I didn’t want to give you false hope. I have people I trust working on this, but I don’t know if it can be done.”

“If all of this is true, why didn’t you go to the media instead of letting yourself be turned into the most wanted man in the Alliance?” Oikawa asked.

“Because I don’t have any proof,” Iwaizumi said. “All I have is Akira’s body and no one is going to believe his mind controls Asteria 5. I couldn’t get anything from the archives when I left. Getting the pod out was hard enough.”

“You could be lying to us,” Oikawa said. In his heart, he knew this was false, but during rehab he taught the rational part of his brain to be louder than his instincts. He needed his mind right now. He needed this to make sense, but it didn't. Everything was wrong.

“Do you believe him, Akira?" Kindaichi asked. "Do you really think that’s you in that pod?”

“I do,” Akira said. “I can tell he’s not lying—his heart rate hasn’t changed, his eyes are consistent, and his voice is within its normal limits. Besides, something is... wrong with me. I don't remember what's wrong, but I know something is. I trust him.”

“Thank you,” Iwaizumi said.

“I need to lay down,” Kindaichi said, rubbing at his temples. “And maybe pick up stress eating. I’m going to my room. I—I need to think. Akira, if you want to talk, we can. You know I'm always here for you, no matter what. I'm on your side."

Akira said nothing as Kindaichi left, leaving Oikawa and Iwaizumi alone. Only, they were not alone. Akira was there. He was always awake, always watching, always listening. Oikawa felt the sudden urge to lie down, too.

“It’s almost like you want me to be a criminal,” Iwaizumi said.

“If you were in my shoes, would you believe me?” Oikawa asked.

“Because it’s you, yes.”

Oikawa felt a knife in his heart. “We’re not kids anymore, Iwa-chan. I want to believe you, but this is crazy.”

Oikawa sat down in a chair, wondering if the weight of what he just learned would crush him. He certainly felt like it would. How did Iwaizumi carry this all by himself? How had he not been crushed beneath its weight? The entire Alliance was against him, yet he hadn’t given up. Oikawa felt like every achievement in his life failed in comparison. 

“If you’re telling the truth,” Oikawa said, feeling as if he had aged fifty years in a matter of hours, “I want to be part of your plan. You say you want to help Akira get back into his body, but I won’t believe until I see it.”

Iwaizumi stepped forward, agitated, perhaps the first sign of emotion he had shown since they made it to Oikawa’s quarters. He had been so composed and detached when talking about the Hyperion Project. Oikawa wondered if that was the soldier or the man talking. Without a doubt, right now he was looking at the man Iwaizumi Hajime, not a soldier. 

“I already told you, I don’t want anyone else wrapped up in this. I know you can handle this, but I don’t want you to. I don’t want another innocent person being labeled a criminal.”

Oikawa lifted his head, chin high. “You’re not getting rid of me so easily.”

“You’re as stubborn as ever.”

“And you’re as stupid as ever.”

Iwaizumi sighed. He dropped to a knee in front of Oikawa. He did not reach out to touch him, but Oikawa did not think he would mind if he had.

“I won’t let any harm come to you,” Iwaizumi said. “If you want to help, I know that nothing in this universe will stop you. But I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. Just promise me that if I ask you to stop being involved, you’ll listen.”

“I don’t like being told what to do.”

“It’s for your own safety. My own father wants me dead because I betrayed him, because I knew too much and wouldn't sit by and let it happen. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt. Especially you.”

Oikawa chewed his lower lip, thinking while Iwaizumi watched him with all the intensity of a star burning. Oikawa nodded. 

Wordlessly, Iwaizumi stood. As he made his way to the door, Oikawa asked, “Can you get back to your dirty cargo bay undetected?”

Iwaizumi grinned. “Who do you think I am?”

Light and teasing, Oikawa said, “A criminal. An idiot. _Iwa-chan_.”

Iwaizumi’s grin grew as soft and warm as Earth’s sunlight; Oikawa wanted to bask in it. Iwaizumi said, “I’ll be in touch, I promise,” and then left.

Alone, Oikawa breathed. For the first time, he was acutely aware that Akira was present but did not breathe with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Hyperion:** the Titan god of heavenly light and father of the lights of heaven (Eos, Helios, and Selene); his name means “watcher from above” and “he who goes above”_  
>   
> I've been so eager to reach this point in the story. Partially because it's the big reveal and the characters now have a larger plot to focus on, but mostly because if you've read to this point knowing Kindaichi/Kunimi was a tagged ship, you've been cool with the idea of Kindaichi falling in love with a computer. And I love anyone that was cool with that. 
> 
> Kindaichi and Kunimi's relationship was inspired by Eiffel and Hera's relationship in the podcast Wolf 359. While not explicitly romantic, it's very clear that he loves her and cares about her despite her being an AI. I planned out a lot of the early chapters not knowing what Iwaizumi had done to be labeled a criminal and was set on having Akira be an AI the entire story. When I decided on this plot, I still wanted to make it clear that Kindaichi already felt deeply for Akira despite him being an AI and Akira felt deeply for Kindaichi. I don't know if I accomplished that, but it's what I intended.


End file.
